Re: A thought on Windows Experience

[David Kastrup]

Richard Shann <address@hidden> writes:

> On Mon, 2013-12-09 at 11:51 +0100, David Kastrup wrote:
>> David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:
>> 
>> _Very_ frustrating and unusable.  Complains about missing libraries when
>> starting but those are available in Ubuntu.
>> 
>> Opens what feels like dozens of overlapping windows you first need to
>> cleanup.
>
> Yes, this has annoyed all ponders who have tried the latest Denemo. I
> guess they will have to stay closed on the first run. (Once you close
> them they stay closed if you quit cleanly). It will then be up to the
> user to find the palettes in the View menu and start exploring them.
>
>>   Refuses to compile anything, stating in the print preview
>
> I wonder why - it works for some distros out of the box - otherwise you
> have to give the path to LilyPond in Edit->Change Prefs->Externals

Nope.  Not even with an explicit path to either 2.19.0 or 2.16.2.  Just
displays the following screen shot.

Also seems to have some memory managing problems: the fonts in the
windows displayed "E" instead of "k".

>> window that LilyPond can't compile stuff (there is a version of LilyPond
>> in the path).  One can open the LilyPond source file window (looks like
>> it should work in 2.19.0), but Denemo refuses to open the "LilyPond
>> error" window.
>
> It does actually open the LilyPond Errors pane, but as Denemo is unable
> to run LilyPond that is empty.
> The LilyPond Errors item is not a separate window but a pane in the
> LilyPond view, it would be better if the toggle for this lived in the
> LilyPond window.

No, there is no LilyPond error view, not in a pane or otherwise.

> Well as this is a LilyPond output window with no LilyPond executable
> found this is not by itself surprising. It should tell you (once only)
> that it didn't find LilyPond.

It's a text in the window, and it does not change.

>> So much for the binary install.  I am not too enthused about the
>> prospect of having to compile from source just to be able to test
>> basic functionality and possibly get a better clue about the intended
>> startup behavior.
>
> For folk with compilers, autotools and so on already installed
> building from source is painless - it is not like running GUB. The
> list of packages needed is on the Download page. (Hmm, pretty
> painless, but there is some squabble amongst the distros about
> splitting up one library into two ...)
>
> I have put in bug reports for the problems you have unearthed - Thank
> you!

Do you have any users actually having success with the binary package on
Ubuntu?  If not, telling people that the "ancient" versions delivered
with the system itself are not to be used is creating a rather large
barrier of entry.

-- 
David Kastrup