Re: Do we really offer the future?

[James Harkins]

It's a bit of a side topic, but the the thread has touched on
questions of usability, so I think it's related.

I think there's one command in Finale that demonstrates a major obstacle to
widespread adoption of LilyPond: Delete Measure Stack. This is an extremely
common need when editing scores, and raw LilyPond code offers no clean,
easy way to do it.

LP input is structured horizontally, around voices flowing forward in
time. Meanwhile, composers think in terms of chunks of time whose
arrangement is vertical. (I don't intend this to preclude polyphonic
thinking, but even Bach must have struck a whole bar now and again.)

"So how do I delete bar 47 from this LP score?"

.... Well, first you go to your global variable holding rehearsal marks,
tempo marks, special barlines and meter and key changes, and tweak the
number of spacer rests. Then you go into the music expressions for every
part, one by one, and delete the notes for that bar. Frescobaldi's
point-and-click can help you with that, but it doesn't automate the process.

"Umm... In Finale, all that takes half a second."

We try to explain this away by saying that LP is an engraving tool,
not a composition tool, but -- if we're really serious about making LP
more attractive to the "average" user of notation software, this is
too glib. People writing music simply don't think of musical
simultaneity in the same terms that LP does. It *does* take effort to
adapt one's thinking to LP's way, and we shouldn't try to convince
ourselves that this isn't off-putting.

I don't see a way, with LP input as currently defined, to handle this
requirement cleanly. If the LP community were to decide that it's
important, as a way to attract users, I think it would call for a
higher-level musical representation that generates LP code. Denemo is a
step in this direction, though I'm not in a position to evaluate it as I
haven't used it.

Don't get me wrong -- I think LP's rendering engine is amazing, and for me,
it *is* worth the effort to shoehorn my music into LP's format if it means
I can use this fantastic engine. But I can't pretend it isn't any effort,
either.

hjh