Re:improving LilyPond useability

[Yann]

Hello everybody :)

I recently followed with great interest all the discussion about
improving Lilypond usability/Windows experience/extending with
"packages". Sorry, I didn't reply "on the fly", but here are a few
thought about these things (a bit mixed, sorry).

It has been a long time since I used Lilypond on windows (maybe since
2.12) and I almost never used Lilypad (at that time I was using
Rosegarden on Linux to type some scores, then exported to Lilypond,
then compile the score with Lilypond on windows because the windows
version was more recent than the one available through Linux package
manager).
But I remember the way it worked by default (drag and drop or double
clicking on the .ly) felt a bit weird. I think also maybe at that time
the behaviour regarding output path was also surprising (I don't
remember exactly, but I have some fuzzy memories of pdf files going to
different directories than the input one, and maybe to different
places depending whether your drag and drop or you double-click).

I think as some other have said that it would be more logical to open
the file in Lilypad when double-clicking on the .ly, and to give the
user the possibility to compile it from there (I don't remember if
there is a "compile score" menu item).


> Learning Manual is 200 pages.  10 times too long - noone except the
> most nerdy people would read it (no surprise that i'm using Lily - i'm
> a nerd ;P).  Even the "Tutorial" part of it is way too long (20 pages
> just to get the program running and another 20 pages to get very basic
> notation!!).

> I've created a "Quick-start" tutorial some time ago - my choir
> colleagues used it when crowd-typesetting "Dixit Dominus".  It's only
> 6 pages long and covers nearly all basic notation elements than a
> beginner would need - but it's not just a cheat-sheet: it introduces
> and teaches how to use Lily.  Add to that 3 pages explaining how to
> write basic structure and we'd have something that gives an easy (but
> complete enough) introduction to LilyPond in half an hour (as opposed
> to 2 days of reading and heavy thinking for the Learning manual).

I agree with this statement of Janek Warchoł, I think a quick start
document would be nice. Maybe the user could be redirected to it when
first starting Lilypond (either a web page launched in the browser, or
a document open) ? Such a document would fall in-between the c d e f g
a b c example of Lilypad and the learning manual.


I really like as well the proposal about having some "LaTeX like" (I'm
not saying that it HAS to be similar to LaTeX behaviour here)
extension by packages capability. What I really came to like about
LaTeX is that you can really separate the form and the content, having
all your options and settings grouped for example in a preamble file.
I get the feeling (maybe I'm wrong here) that it is currently more
difficult to do with Lilypond, as you would need to insert statements
and overrides in various places (layout, staves options) to change the
score's look.
About this, I also like the fact in LaTeX that once I find the package
that does what I want, I can read the associated doc and use it. Most
of the time it is as simple as "load this package, specify options"
and use some new commands if provided. What I mean is that the
procedure is somewhat standard and unified.

However, I have a question : it has been suggested to use the package
capability to implement new features, that could be merged later on to
the main Lilypond release. If that happens, what is done with the
package ? Does it stays outside Lilypond core as an external package ?
or is it merged inside ? So do we still have to include/usepackage it
? (just bouncing ideas, it will surely depend on how all this
mechanism is implemented, if this work is done).


I came across several projects (Lalily, openlilylib, orchestralily, or
Nicolas Sceaux scores) that seemed to have very nice features (didn't
explore much though, sorry). Would be great if these could somehow
benefit of some standardised package like interface.


Sorry for such a long message - maybe useless :)

Yann