Re: file locations or links in snippets

[Graham Percival]

On Sat, 24 May 2008 21:31:16 +0100
"Trevor Daniels" <address@hidden> wrote:

> You wrote Sunday, May 11, 2008 10:35 PM
> 
> > Any brilliant suggestions?  I'm stuck.  :|
> 
> First, I'd give the full paths to the file that would be used by
> default during install, and say that's what they are.  Anyone who
> changed the default path should have no trouble adjusting these.  So
> for Windows it would be:
> 
> C:/Program Files/LilyPond/usr/share/lilypond/current/
> 
> (Using INSTALLDIR for C:/Program Files doesn't seem right to me.)
> 
> I don't know what the others would be though.

The problem is that on Linux, people usually don't install
software by downloading it from a web site, clicking on it,
clicking next,next,next, etc.  Instead, we see a list of available
software, and either click on "lilypond", or say
$ install lilypond

Everything else is taken care of.  It's way easier than installing
software on windows.


However, we (the lilypond crew) have *no* control over where this
automatic installation places files.  Each linux distribution has
its own place to put them.  There has been some attempts in recent
years to standardize this, but I don't know offhand how this is
going.


I wouldn't mind changing the windows instructions to be the
default value, but since we're already using variables with Linux,
is seems a bit out of place.  And it's more correct to say
INSTALLDIR; if somebody installs it do a different location, the
LM is still correct.

Now that I'm looking at it again, I definitely think we shoudl say
"INSTALLDIR is normally c:\program files\" and whatnot, though.

> Second, I'd drop the strong bits and simply use four paras like:
> 
> "If you are using MS Windows (any flavour) and downloaded the
> standard version of LilyPond from lilypond.org, the directory of
> interest is C:/Program Files/LilyPond/usr/share/lilypond/current/."
> 
> "If you installed LilyPond by using a package manager or by compiling
> it from source the directory of interest on any system is
> PREFIX/share/lilypond/X.Y.Z/
> where ... etc"

IMO it's more clear which material the user should read this way.
If you're on windows, you don't need to see anything about OSX or
linux.  I wouldn't mind changing it to a list, but I don't think
that mere paragraphs are enough.

Cheers,
- Graham