Re: Appreciation / Financial support

[Tim McNamara]

On May 28, 2012, at 1:17 PM, David Kastrup wrote:
> 
>> As great as Lilypond's output is, there is a long way to go in terms
>> of simplification and usability (the syntax needs to be simplified
>> dramatically; a lot of the code users have to write is pretty ugly and
>> is going to scare off potential users).  Having someone working full
>> time on Lilypond is a great way to get that done in under a decade.
> 
> The syntax will _not_ be simplified dramatically since LilyPond,
> overall, has a reasonably simple syntax.  

"Dramatic" may have been over-stated, although to the non-programmer like me 
the syntax of Lilypond is far from simple- it seems exceedingly complex and 
much of it is like magic incantations which are spoken but the meaning is not 
really known.  And that's not even including Scheme and grobs and all that 
stuff.

I was thinking about simplification like being able to put in a coda with \coda 
or a segno with \segno instead of things like

 \mark \markup { \musicglyph #"scripts.segno" }

and so on.  The more complicated the incantations are, the easier it is to get 
them wrong the harder it is to debug and the longer it takes to write.