Re: New LilyPond website

[David Kastrup]

Tim McNamara <address@hidden> writes:

>> On Nov 29, 2016, at 3:57 AM, Andrew Bernard <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> If however you are discussing expanding the mindshare of lilypond in the
>> music publishing world, then I hardly think the cosmetic appearance of a
>> website is the most influential factor. That's a very shallow approach.
>> Surely it must be the quality and engineering of the software itself that
>> speaks for lilypond's virtues.
>
> The cosmetic appearance of the web site is most certainly an
> influential factor in expanding the "mindshare" of Lilypond.  That is
> one of the realities of the world as it works.  The quality and
> engineering of the software itself is invisible to 99% of your
> potential users.

The engineering is not presented on the website.  The "engineering" of
entering a document into LilyPond is.  That's the thing that is likely
to be the deal breaker for people if any.  So I don't see the point in
hiding it.

Even though I am aware that the decision makers and the water carriers
are not always the same person, and getting the former to pick LilyPond
may make the difference to the latter biting the bullet and actually
going through with LilyPond.

> Take me- I am a musician.  I know nothing useful about C and it's
> variants, Scheme, etc.  Lilypond might have the most elegant code ever
> written and I will not see it, even if you point right at it.  The
> result?  I am not going to evaluate Lilypond by its engineering.

But you are most certainly going to evaluate LilyPond by the
"engineering" it forces _you_ to do.  Particularly because it is not
your comfort zone.

> There's clearly some disadvantage to me for that, but at 57 years old
> with a full-time career, I'm not going to learn how to code.

At 57 years old, a computer for you is not inherently icons and
mouse-dragging.  Typists doing text processing on some 70s text
terminals would be considered computer specialists by today's standards,
and clearly they also would have stated that they are not going to learn
how to code.  A lot of the bullets you were willing to bite using
LilyPond were old or expected bullets for you.

I think that's part of the reason that the user base on these lists
tends to be older on average than the general music writing populace.

> For people just finding out about Lilypond, the Lilypond web site is
> the point of entry (I first heard about Lilypond on the MacUpdate site
> and followed the link from there).  Does it say to me "this is a
> modern, powerful application that will produce beautiful sheet music
> that you will be proud to hand out to your peers?"  Or does it say
> "this application is the product of spit, chewing gum and baling
> wire?"  OK, I am exaggerating a lot because the current web site
> doesn't actually say that to me, but it is dated now and looks a bit
> hobbyist by comparison.

Others have mentioned it, but I'll say it again: after the last
reorganizations in particular, it is quite clean and efficient compared
to a lot out there.  You don't need to scroll around for the important
stuff.  And the important stuff is actually there, in mostly obvious
places.

Navigation in the documentation, like using the index, is awkwardish.
And since one constantly quotes documentation at people, "copy a link to
here" kind of pointers would be nice: I tend to do my searching in Info,
then do a search engine search for key phrases in the Info version, and
then take a look at the HTML elements to see whether there is an anchor
nearby.  But that would want fixing at the Texinfo conversion stage, not
the general web surface.

> Inasmuch as much of the FOSS community is often loathe to admit it,
> branding does actually matter.  Getting people to use the software
> matters.  Writing great free-as-in-speech software and then not
> persuading people to give it a try tends to shoot that software in the
> foot.  An attractive, modern website can help with that.
>
> John's pages look pretty good and I thank him for the hours he put
> into it.  The scrolling is not annoying on my tablets but was on my
> laptops, for some reason.  That being said, having looked at the
> sample web site on my laptops, tablets and phone, the Learn page is
> very difficult as it stands.  It's row upon row of basically
> undifferentiated choices- if you didn't go there already knowing what
> you wanted, the page doesn't help you choose.

Well, that sounds like something that would warrant addressing
regardless of the layout.

-- 
David Kastrup