Re: Bravura in LilyPond

[Urs Liska]

Am 22.12.2013 21:53, schrieb David Kastrup:
> Janek Warchoł <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > 2013/12/17 Noeck <address@hidden>:
> > > I have to emphasize once more that the real work has been done by
> > > Nathan Ho. I just included it to oll. He also wrote the README.
> > >
> > > Contact with him also showed how LP loses skilled contributors: He
> > > didn't get a single reply to his mail about this. That made him stop
> > > working on it. Now I stay in contact and he got back his enthusiasm
> > > about it, did the update to Bravura 0.7 and wants to go on.
> >
> > Nathan, i am very sorry about the fact that your email in October
> > didn't get any replies.  I saw it back then and was interested in it
> > (actually i wanted to include it in openlilylib/snippets myself, after
> > trying it out), but i didn't find time to look at it in detail, and it
> > kept slipping from my head...  I apologize, and i feel personally
> > responsible for your discouragement.  Unfortunately, in LilyPond
> > community so many things are happening that it's nigh impossible to
> > keep up with everything, and we sometimes forget to appreciate
> > contributors for what they do.  I'm sorry about it.
>
> Well, if you take a look at things like
> <URL:http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=3723>, the
> amount of feedback is, uh, underwhelming.  It focuses on indentation
> (I have to admit, though, that I had forgotten about Werner expressing
> his opinion that this is a move in the right direction).
>
> Since the patch series _vastly_ simplifies the grammar while extending
> and regularizing its functionality, this is somewhat amusing.  But then
> it is not entirely unexpected.

This is an example of what I wrote in an earlier message. When you see 
this patch and its description (if you see it) its easy not to realize 
its potential because it looks daunting. And when you're not in a 
position that you think you _have_ to go through it and understand it 
you will likely skip it for something more digestible.
So probably you would get substantial feedback for something like this 
by either asking somebody directly or throwing in an email with a 
concrete potential for discussion.

While reading this on the current thread I got the impression this patch 
may really be something fundamental, but I don't really see how this 
applies. And I don't have the slightest idea about contributing some 
substantial comments.

> What this boils down to is that most contributors creating particular
> functionality first do so because it is most important to _them_.
> Particularly when we are talking about first-time contributors, it is
> likely that the importance of some feature is strongest felt by
> themselves since it even made them cross the threshold from user to
> developer.

Yes, that's very true.
By now I'm occasionally acting on issue reports and feature requests on 
the Frescobaldi tracker, but "crossing the threshold" was definitely for 
realizing things I wanted to have myself.

> We had several other projects where pretty much a single person carried
> the day, like support for Kievan chant.  Ot certainly takes a lot of
> persistence until private projects without particular interest to other
> currently active core developers will be integrated in LilyPond proper.
>
> > Thanks for what you did!  It's awesome!  Hopefully now that it's
> > included in openlilylib/snippets
> > (http://github.com/openlilylib/snippets/tree/master/custom-music-fonts/smufl)
> > it won't get lost, and updating it should be simple.
>
> Still needs to be done by somebody.

I think Joram takes some responsibility to watch over it.

Urs