Re: New LilyPond website

[Shane Brandes]

It was exciting to see such an ambitious model proposed for the
website, however in addition to previous issues raised about
accessibility etc. I would like to give you my initial impression. You
may take my commentary as you see fit.
   I am the sort of fellow that when looking in the beer aisle it is
the Bitburger or Sam Adams I tend to notice first because they have
words and not fancy paintings, and therefore immediately
understandable information. That is not to say other beers might not
be good, but relying on visual hook does not help especially when
every other bottle has the same swirl of colors. In the proposed
website I see nothing at all that interests, except an odd button that
says learn more. One should already have some inkling of what the
program offers as soon as you land on the website. We are still living
uncomfortably with the notion that because ultimately websites are
text based and are therefore some how books which need dust covers.
While a great deal can be learned from the humble book, the
transmitter of knowledge for hundreds of years and one should clearly
not overlook such lessons of organization and layout that can be
learned from them one must also be cognizant of the lesson of the
medium itself that they gave us. For example books from the incunabula
period are still safely handleable while many 19th century editions
are in perilous shape due to their extremely acidic paper. With web
design, it might be the case that such scripting might be the
equivalent of such unstable paper. So that being said the current
website is pretty solid, but if think people really need more
flashiness to it let it not be to the detriment of ease of use or
understanding.
   In the usage of images, it is quite clear and been amply
demonstrated that pictures are worth a thousand words, but you must
carefully consider what those words are you are conveying. The more
cynical side of me sees the opening picture and thinks oh a thing that
is for short sighted people. The glasses give the idea of something
that requires intense examination.
  One humorous thing is the TEXT INPUT section. It states it is as
easy as ABC. ABC happens to be another music typesetting program.
Anyway, a great example of why some additional eyes are always a
useful thing for any project.
  So please do not take this as slamming your efforts as it is not, it
is just to say there are a lot of people here who have invested a lot
of personal effort in keeping things running here, I am not one of
them, but it may be well worth the effort going forward to extract
knowledge from them. And I hope you stick with this wonderful program
and its users and developers it is always good to have fresh insights
and energy.

kind regards,
Shane Brandes



On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 10:08 AM, Karlin High <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 11/29/2016 4:47 AM, Urs Liska wrote:
>> But I would much more like to see it created by a static site generator, in 
>> a system where the content can be managed as a Git repository.
>
> I did a Google serach for "texinfo website generator." Here's one that
> reminds me of the LilyPond way of doing things.
>
> HAUNT:
> https://haunt.dthompson.us/
> "Haunt is a hackable static site generator written in Guile Scheme...
> Websites written in Haunt are described as purely functional programs
> that accept “posts”, text documents containing arbitrary metadata, as
> input and transform them into complete HTML pages using Scheme
> procedures. Haunt has no opinion about what markup language authors
> should use to write their posts and will happily work with any format
> for which a “reader” procedure exists."
>
> Looks like there's a "reader" for texinfo.
> https://haunt.dthompson.us/haunt-02-released.html
> --
> Karlin High
> Missouri, USA
>
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