Warning. I this message, "Why don't we" does not mean "do it, you
slave". It means just asking "do you think it's a worthwhile idea?"
The thread about usability and promoting has forked too much and my
thoughts are somewhat related to both. I am crossposting to hear users
feedback also, sorry for that.
I keep seeing newcomers double-clicking the LilyPond icon on the
desktop despite of our warnings about not to do that. LaTeX is also
just a typesetting engine and people do not try to work with it by
first clicking on a desktop icon, do they? I don't really know what's
the Windows LaTeX experience like, but I can assume the user base of
LaTeX is far greater than LilyPond's, and newcomers have always an
experienced user in the nearby ready to help. That's the "critical
mass" effect that Finale and Sibelius already have and we don't.
Despite of having a README just in front of your eyes, IMO we should
expect people will always try to "open lilypond" to work in a typical
program window. Why don't we just give them what they want? That is: a
program you open. All programs are "opened" and it doesn't matter how
hard we try, most people want to open the program. We could make the
lilypond icon to launch a shell applet to open ly projects and a
button to compile. Of course, a console output window and a PDF
pre-viewer are necessary. I see the drag-drop ritual in the tutorial
too few standard, too weird and too much lilypond-specific. That
scares newcomers.
But wait: this has been done. Valentin Villenave dit it once. A bundle
that installed a PDF viewer and a small button panel with all the most
basic operatons. I don't remember if it included a message output.
But wait again: Frescobaldi already does this. It is super-easy to
install on windows and it has got all the necessary items: an editor,
a pre-viewer and a message output panel. Of course it has many, many
more features, but even so it is lightweight (unlike the now almost
defunct jEdit/lilypondtool). Why don't we do a cut-down
Frescobaldi-like shell for the absolute beginner? The File->Open...
menu entry must include a sub-menu with a lot of ready_to_compile
fancy or real-world examples.
Yes, we already promote easier environments, but in my opinion the
bare minimum we offer is too weak as to be useful for all except
mid-high level nerdies.
I always think all you do to lower the entry threshold is never enough
and ours is currently a bit too high. It's not the language, it's the
experience. And never forget Windows users are potentially way more
numerous than command line users.