Re: svg output

[Graham Percival]

On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 2:56 PM, David Raleigh Arnold
<address@hidden> wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:09:36 +0000
> Graham Percival <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> new feature (*cough* bugfix)
>
> What does that mean?

It means that the SVG update introduced, and relied on, so many
architectural changes that it's silly to call it a bugfix.

> Why wasn't svg output fixed when it broke?

Because nobody, INCLUDING YOURSELF, sent a well-formed patch to fix it
when it broke.

>  Is there is a problem with priorities?

Yes -- yours.  You're not willing to put the effort into helping the
lilypond development team, but you feel qualified to second-guess us.

If you're interested in helping, let's talk.  We current have a bit of
a crisis with bugs -- we don't have enough people checking for
regressions.  This appears to be an item close to your interests.  And
all you need is lilypond, a web browser, and an email client.
Absolutely no programming needed.

Prime example: an hour ago I uploaded 2.13.11, but I forgot to check
the regtest comparison.  Whoops.  I'm so lazy and evil and bad.
(ladies: I'm /deliciously/ bad)

It would be nice if somebody could check the regtest comparison...
it's too late to recall 2.13.11 if it broke anything, but if it *did*
break something, the sooner we find out about it, the faster we can
fix it.

More info in the Contributor's Guide 7.4 Checking and verifying issues
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.13/Documentation/contributor/checking-and-verifying-issues


After that, it would be nice if somebody could check all the regtests.
 One person has been doing it, but there's no guarantee that he's
found everything.  Again, the sooner we find out if something broke,
the faster it will be to fix.

... of course, if nobody cares about having a stable lilypond that
doesn't break features, then go ahead and ignore these requests for
help.  But don't come crying to me when stuff breaks.

>  Doesn't lilypond's on line output,
> including the docs, look a million times better with svg?

Err, we can't make the html docs use svg.  Last time I checked, even
firefox doesn't render lilypond svgs "out of the box" (it required a
special ~/.font/ dir; no clue how it would be done on windows).  And
even if the open-source browsers properly render the SVG spec -- which
will probably happen within the next 3 years, but I'm not holding my
breath -- there's still the problem of IE.

I seriously doubt that we could consider such a switch for at least
the next 10 years.

> Why the rant?

The rant is because you're demanding that other people do work that
you're not willing to do yourself.  This bugs the bloody mao out of
me.

- Graham