Re: A thought on Windows Experience

[David Kastrup]

Francisco Vila <address@hidden> writes:

> 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.

I was of the impression that LilyPad _was_ what was delivered with the
Windows installer.

> 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.

The last time this discussion came up, Frescobaldi did not work on
MacOSX.  And it comes with its own dependencies.  And installers.

> 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.

Catering for integration of Frescobaldi would be a real headache.  And
the documentation would need adapting as well.  That's not to say
anything about the value provided by such an approach, but it would
likely make a lot more sense and a lot less work if the primary
installed application was Frescobaldi and it offered to install LilyPond
for you using one of our installers, rather than trying to do it the
other way round.

It would also make juggling with several versions a lot nicer since then
Frescobaldi can manage paths, and knows where it put things.

-- 
David Kastrup