Re: Issue 1834 in lilypond: Website: provide link to .ly for examples

[David Kastrup]

Reinhold Kainhofer <address@hidden> writes:

> Am Mittwoch, 24. August 2011, 15:19:57 schrieb David Kastrup:
>> address@hidden writes:
>> > The examples are often too complex and lengthy to be really useful to
>> > beginners.
>> > As above, they wouldn't work in mouse-over bubbles.
>> 
>> The mouse-over bubble would show a looking-glass view into the source,
>> centered at the corresponding view.
>
> In my eyes, this would defeat the purpose of the examples page. Our
> message to newcomers there is "Look, how beautiful LilyPond scores can
> be".  If we force a mouse-over bubble with lilypond code on every
> visitor,

No force here.  He can move the mouse away.

> then the message becomes "You can do pretty scores, but just look how
> terribly complicated and uncomprehensible it is to write a score with
> lilypond". Will that incite any non-programmer to use lilypond?

You won't get them to use Lilypond without using Lilypond.  You can't
hide that.  It is pointless.  One can do pretty scores with Inkscape.
Probably prettier than you can ever hope to do with Lilypond.  But you
hopefully won't convince anybody to do his scores with Inkscape.
Because then he needs to become an excellent engraver as well as an
excellent graphics master.

With Lilypond, all the information is in the source.  Write that source,
no matter with what tool or editor, and the score will fall out.  The
effort that a typical score has per note or graphical element is not
"terribly complicated and uncomprehensible" but rather startingly short
and comprehensible.  For me, that is a selling point.

There is no point in hiding that from somebody who we wish to start
using Lilypond.  It is not even possible.  If he is adverse to writing
and reading plain text source, there is no way he is going to use
Lilypond without noticing.

-- 
David Kastrup