Re: GOP-PROP 8: issue priorities

[David Kastrup]

Jan Warchoł <address@hidden> writes:

> 2011/8/6 James Lowe <address@hidden>:
>
>> Users and new contributors will interpret priority as importance,
>> though, and will naturally want their favorites to be higher on the
>> list.  That's why I suggested putting issues where we don't know
>> exactly what Lilypond should do, as "Postponed".  Obviously we can't
>> program the behavior until we know what we want it to be, and that
>> motivates users (who might know their area of notation better than we
>> do) to think through what they want.
>
> Hmm.  Interesting point of view.

Not always helpful either.  A lover of artwork won't be able to tell an
artist how to improve his work.  He still can be more, or less satisfied
with it.  You can tell critics "do it yourself then", and they won't be
able to.  But it is not their job.

I have had in projects of my own long histories of explaining to people
why something "obvious" they want to is a logical impossibility, or how
the blame lies with bugs and deficiencies of components outside of my
control.  You can get religious about it, and it becomes annoying at the
twentieth repetition from somebody who does not know about the nineteen
times before that.  And at some point of time, you do some imprudent
workaround, or some total magic, or whatever, and people stop bothering
you.

The compromises between the wishes of people and the technical feasible
things and those you want to do are a moving target.  And the
responsibility for making technical and logical impossibilities
disappear, to match the program better to expectations and requirements,
is only something the experienced programmer can do.  Sometimes the
results please the user more than the programmer.  It is hard to
generalize this into policies, since a policy would not change its mind
if enough people bother it.

-- 
David Kastrup