Re: Request for feedback on 'lobbying' paper

[Graham Percival]

On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 01:05:40PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
> Colin Hall <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > Here is a piece of opinion from me, so you know my position. Users of
> > WYSIWYG engraving software accept the shortcomings because it is quick
> > and effective. Users of text-based approaches accept the additional
> > effort required because they are perfectionists.
> 
> Actually, I tend to use text-based approaches not really because I care
> about the perfection of the result, but because it allows me to properly
> separate input, tool and output.

I haven't read the paper, but I'll chime in to say that I prefer
text-based because then I have complete control over my
"documents" (be they text, source code, or sheet music).  When
using a GUI tool[1], my hard work is at the mercy of some magical
process which may or may not save the data correctly.  If I want
to view my past work, I'm at the mercy of those tools.  When I was
a composition student, I found that my fellow students would give
excuses about their scores about once a week ("oh, Finale put a
dotted line over those notes, but I couldn't figure out how to
remove it").

[1] yes, a few GUI tools save data in a human-readable format, but
those are unfortunately rare.


By contrast, using a text-based tool (especially in conjunction
with source control such as git) leaves me in control.  If
anything breaks (which it does occasionally), then I can easily
compare the previous (working) input to the current version and
figure how what I did wrong.

- Graham