Re: bug rating

[Mark Polesky]

Graham Percival wrote:

> Let me turn this around: you are one of our top 10 bug
> hunters.  If you had no previous connection to any of the
> issues, how would you decide which bug(s) to work on?  Would
> you seriously just start working on whichever item *I* said
> was most important / most annoying ?  or would you try to
> find an item that appealed to *you* personally?

I think I side with Werner on this one.  There are 336 open
issues in the tracker.  And something like #379, which most of
us would agree looks hideous*, is given priority `low', while
something like #887, which involves point-and-click of all
things, is given priority `medium'.

*http://lilypond.googlecode.com/issues/attachment?aid=-7427108513750415230&name=line-break-slurs.PNG

If I were looking for issues to tackle, I might entirely
overlook #379, buried under a hundred other "higher" priority
issues like point-and-click.

But the issues that Werner is talking about, these are the
bugs that serious typesetters will find themselves invariably
colliding with.  Someone typesetting real scores for a real
publisher will have an easier time accepting a
point-and-click/special-character limitation, but will find a
bug like #379 simply unacceptable.  And if the only workaround
involves tweaking every slur manually, then they'll turn to a
different program.

Personally, I don't think `priority'* or `annoying' captures
it.  I would label them `embarrassing', because they're
holding LilyPond back from looking really professional.  And I
think that the harshness of that label carries an even bigger
incentive to get rid of them (somehwat like the flashing-text
pink boxes on the new website).

*http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2009-07/msg00082.html

- Mark