Well, after several announcements, I now have about four participants
for this year's meeting secured. While that's about the amount who
bothered registering timely last year, it means that I am not able to
plan suitably ahead.
The consequences are that I can't really put forward an agenda, and
I can't invite people who might be interesting to the LilyPond
community, like Uwe Steger (see
<URL:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMBJowDdFq4> for an example of
computer-based typesetting use with a likely interesting workflow) or an
acquaintance who has dabbled with EU proposals, or the accordion
ensemble I am playing in and so forth and so on. It's also not clear
whether there is any sense in reserving an LCD projector like last year
at the video store.
Not all those opportunities are definitely over, so get a grip and
announce your interest as soon as possible.
With regard to celebrities, I do have a few registrations, like from
Janek, wrangler of slurs and lyrics, or Jan, one of the primordial
LilyPond developers and certainly _the_ authority regarding GUB. He'll
be bringing samples of the Liedboek <URL:http://www.liedboek.nl>,
probably the largest project so far tackled using LilyPond. Han-Wen,
the other of the initial LilyPond team, will unfortunately have a
concert on Sunday, so he'll be able to come Monday earliest which is
just when Jan will have left. Talk about bad luck.
Harm, the tireless wrangler of power-user solutions on LilyPond's user
list (also known as Thomas Morley) is going to be there, so there will
be quite a bit of opportunity of discussing changes and extensions in
LilyPond that could reel more typesetting problems into the range of
mere mortals.
A few days ago, Jan Rosseel from the Scora project
<URL:http://www.scora.net> which happens to use LilyPond as its
typesetting engine announced his interest to join the meeting and would
like to explain how LilyPond is used in Scora and what changes might
simplify life for them. The project works towards the premiere of a
symphonic concert in December (rehearsals starting in September) with a
program including the 5th Symphony by Sibelius(!).
To my chagrin, releasing 2.18 is still on the agenda, and depending on
where we'll be with regard to it, we might have discussions about what
we did right and wrong and what we might have to change. We might also
try some team coding sessions to get the few remaining critical bugs
under control so that we'll have a fixed perspective for getting 2.18
released and maybe at least start the stable branch.
Other topics:
Guilev2 (seriously)
Markup redesign
Page breaker
MusicXML discussions
Discussions about EU project feasibility (I tried getting something
organized a few months ago, but it basically died from lack of immediate
recognizable interest from commercial entities).
Reports about the last meeting can be found at
<URL:http://news.lilynet.net/?The-LilyPond-Report-28>. Information
about travel and place (please don't get confused by last year's dates!)
is still at <URL:http://news.lilynet.net/?LilyPond-meeting-in-Waltrop>,
in a nutshell: Im Knäppen 63 in 45731 Waltrop, next useful bus station
"Waltrop Elmenhorst", next useful subway "Brambauer Verkehrshof", next
large train station "Dortmund Hbf", next large airport Düsseldorf (there
is some Ryanair airport called "Düsseldorf Weeze" which is actually
quite far from Düsseldorf).
Of course, the Spotted Flycatchers are nesting in different places, last
year's foal "Socke" is by now a yearling, OpenStreetMap still has no
clue about our address (but Google Maps does, and Bing Maps too, but the
final yards of the approach have to be from the Southeast since the
bridge to the Northwest has fallen prey to fire decades ago without
telling Bing).
The date this time around will be August 2013, Friday 16th to Tuesday
20th, with the possibility to arrive Thursday 15th late in the day for
people who'd otherwise miss stuff early Friday.
The proposed date coincides with the "Dattelner Kanalfest"
<URL:http://www.kanalfest.de/> which is the big competition (next town)
of the "Waltroper Parkfest" we had running parallel to the conference
last year. It still provides a reasonably close festival and
entertainment for potentially not-just-LilyPond interested attendants or
accompaniment, though with more focus on music and less on small arts
like jugglers and stuff.
But since it is next town, it will not suck dry external accommodation
in Waltrop like the Parkfest did last year. So it should be easier for
people preferring to stay at some hotel or similar to find something not
too far away. Camping on the ground and sleep-ins are of course
possible like last year and I expect most participants to make use of
that.
As mentioned above, most travellers will aim for Dortmund (through bus
or train) though some international travellers will likely have
Düsseldorf as their first destination in Germany.
Hope to _really_ hear from you soon.
All the best!