Re: [frogs] Frog's Lament

[Marc Hohl]

Carl Sorensen schrieb:
> On 11/26/09 2:56 AM, "Marc Hohl" <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>   
> > [...]
> >     
>
> Two things come to mind here:
>
> 1) When any of us asks a question on the list and gets an answer, we ought
> to add it to the CG.  We can either do it by writing a patch, or by writing
> some text that will get added to the CG.
>
> I volunteer to add text to the CG as part of my Frogmeister
> responsibilities, but I don't have the time to follow all the questions and
> answers and turn them into stuff that will be added to the CG.
>   
Perhaps we should collect the bits and pieces on a different place first
(perhaps the frog page). Collecting Information will take a lot of time,
and then, this information has to be reworked properly, and *then* it
is ready to find its way to the CG.

If you need help to get all the informations bundled together, I can offer
myself to help improving the documentation.
> [...]
>
> I'm confused by this description that "the simplest tasks require c++
> coding."  Can you give me an example of such simplest tasks?
>   
Ok, this depends on the definition of "simple". I started to work on 
tablature bends,
but I am stuck, because the graphical output seems to be quite 
promising, whereas
the usability and the syntax etc. isn't. There are only few comments on 
my work, so
I cannot decide in which way I should move on, but it seems to me that I 
have to implement
a new engraver.

Besides, I tried to work on bug #40, because I stumbled on the 
limitations of the glissando
spanner while improving it for tablature. Glissandos (Glissandi?) are 
often played
by electric guitar players, so I see this as part of the tablature 
improvement, even if it
primarily concerns normal staves. But here I have to take into account 
the accidentals
and some fingerings, and long email exchanges with Neil led to the 
conclusion that
the best way to handle this is writing c code.

Perhaps the tasks looked simple and aren't, in fact. But I can't go on 
doing anything
concerning functionality at the moment without c++.
> [...]
> To me, the best way to resolve this problem is to get the knowledge out of
> the gurus heads' and into the documentation.  But that is not likely to
> happen by the gurus writing the documentation.  Instead, we less-experienced
> developers need to document things as we learn them.
>   
Agreed.
> Is it fair that beginners need to document in addition to writing code?
> Probably not.  But we beginners need to improve our understanding, and one
> of the best ways to improve understanding is to explain it to others.  And
> that will help us in our desires to contribute.
>   
In my opinion, even beginners should have to write well-documented code.

I followed the thread about the indentation issues of Ian's patch 
closely, and
it took a lot of changes (IIRC, Neil corrected the last parts himself 
before applying
it) to get the code properly formatted. A suitable documentation will 
probably not
consume such a big amount of time. One can show potential developers some
parts of well-documented code for clarification and let them rework 
their patch
one or two times, and that's it (or at least, ideally).

And, moreover, it seems to be the fact that even developers closer to 
the core write patches
they cannot explain some months later. This should never happen. It is a 
horrendous
waste of time and energy if I have to find out what I did some months 
ago, when spending
20 minutes more for describing the code in a suitable way would do the job.

Marc