Re: Problem with remove bar number/ why I'm not upgrading to the new stable version

[David Kastrup]

Jay Hamilton <address@hidden> writes:

> Janek-
> I'm not going to do that. Here's a few reasons why.
> I've been using lilypond since some kind of 1.... version. Some of the
> stable versions have been baby steps and easy to accommodate and
> understand. Many many of the changes that have been taking place in V2
> have not been like that. It took me a year to figure out all the
> changes during the last two stable versions. And now there is a new
> one and just looking at the templates I realize that I have no idea
> what is going on and that the program has now reached a level of
> complexity that defeats my purposes- to produce a good looking, in a
> quick way, sheet of music for students and professional musicians.

Well, obviously I am rather partial here, but I quite disagree with your
assessment here.  What you are witnessing on the user list is the
emergence of "power users", a class of users narrowing the gap between
users and core developers.  Yes, they juggle with complex material.  But
that does not mean that things have actually become more complex, but
rather that they previously would have had to drop the ball.

For the normal user, things have not changed all that much.  Lots of
typesetting tasks are now done better without user intervention.  The
documentation is improving quite a bit.  Many operations are becoming
more streamlined and logical.  Many weird exceptions are gradually
disappearing, and a lot of things that previously required deep meddling
with Scheme programming have become much simpler and don't require
leaving LilyPond itself all that much.

Check out
<URL:http://news.lilynet.net/?The-LilyPond-Report-23&lang=en#feature_story_prelude_1_in_scheme>
and compare the final version of input I am using here with the version
from Nicolas Sceaux (referenced in the article) about five years
earlier.  Things have become much, much simpler to do.

Now this might still not be the level you are comfortable with, but it
is a level that quite a few readers on the user lists actually can work
with, and consequently you can get help and suggestions here for solving
your problems.

> So in the course of if it's not broken don't fix it. I'm not going to
> upgrade to the new version. I'm certain that this will render me
> without help down the road (like for this issue about bar numbers) but
> the number of things I see from the lily user group that interest and
> concern them/you lately are rarely anything I have use for or interest
> in using.
>
> I'm sorry, perhaps lily is becoming a better program but it's not
> becoming a better piece of software from this user's perspective. And
> hasn't been in the last few iterations, it's just changed.

The typesetting has improved much (lots of collision and spacing issues
have been tackled), and _lots_ of documents will just convert cleanly
with convert-ly to the rather few syntax changes.  So even if you don't
want to make use of any new features or possibilities, upgrading is
likely to improve your existing scores.

-- 
David Kastrup