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Re: convert-ly problem


From: Han-Wen Nienhuys
Subject: Re: convert-ly problem
Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 19:58:58 +0200
User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6-1.1.fc4 (X11/20050720)

Laura Conrad wrote:
    HN> 1. the number of future (potential) users is smaller than the
    HN> number of current users.

How about considering whether there would be more future potential
users if the half-life of lilypond code were longer?

I seem to recall that you and I have been through this discussion before, and probably more than once. If you need absolute stability, you have the following options:

* Use tools which have stopped developing. SCORE would be a candidate, as well as various musictex flavors.

* Develop your own intermediate format, which you can convert to the syntax du jour.

* Get a contract to keep me supporting LilyPond 1.4 (or what have you).

* Build statically linked binaries, and store them in a safe place, together installation disks of your distribution.

I have the feeling you are trying to make me feel guilty about changing things and/or want me to spend an inordinate amount of my time on your specific problems. If that's the case, you're failing.

Also, you have to keep in mind that the longer you postpone upgrading the .ly files, the more work it will cost. At some point, everyone, including myself, will have forgotten the details of the 1.4 syntax.

    HN> 2. the current users start to pay me for better support of
    HN> older versions.

I'm not really a potential customer of this feature, since my current
income level is low.  But if I were, I would want to know what kind of
future support a paid-for feature could expect. Is a paid-for feature

Paid-for features get the same treatment as other features that I added.
I know you would to like to have hard guarantees about stability, but as I explained above, I can't give those. I can say that 2.6 will be a lot more stable, because we fixed a lot of kludges that were in the 1.x branch). For example, I can't recall any reports of serious breakage between 2.4 and 2.6

just as subject to change without discussion as the non-paid-for
features?

    HN> You might want to try your luck with displayLilyMusic
    HN> though. With that, it should be possible to read something
HN> with \oldaddlyrics and rearrange it for \lyricsto.
If I manage to get a working lilypond development environment again,
I'll look at it.

I recommend you to use the autopackages; they're less fuss to install, and they're made from snapshots that are known to work - somethign which can't be said of CVS.

People who publish their work electronically aren't doing it just
because they want a pdf file this week -- they really expect that next
month or next year or 10 years from now, if they (or someone elsewhere
on the world wide web) want a pdf file with the notes transposed or
different clefs or larger fonts or different paper size..., they'll be
able to get it out of the same code, without completely reconfiguring
their system and risking breaking email.

At the moment, lilypond isn't really promising that, or if it is, it
isn't delivering very well.

I'm not promising anything (read the GPL. LilyPond comes with NO WARRANTY!). Also, "At the moment" is a bit of a misnomer if you are complaining of upgrading out of files which you entered over 4 years ago.

--
 Han-Wen Nienhuys - address@hidden - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen




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