Re: [GLISS] differentiating pre/post/neutral commands

[Graham Percival]

On Mon, Sep 03, 2012 at 04:10:59PM +0200, Jan Nieuwenhuizen wrote:
> On the one hand I very much appreciate the ideas and proposals, because
> they tell me that people really care about our user interface.  This is
> what people see of LilyPond and so it is easy to identify LilyPond by
> it.  On the other hand, everything that does not result in a nice patch
> is useless.  Or worse than useless if it wastes the development time of
> David (and the courtesy time of Han-Wen).

I absolutely disagree that "everything that does not result in a
nice patch is useless".  Think about the Waltrop trip -- I think
that the most valuable parts were seeing each other, eating
together, talking about cross-cultural issues, looking at scores,
hearing about Janek and Rudolfo's typesetting work, our
conversation in the garden, etc.

Don't get me wrong; all the work that you and John did on GUB was
very valuable.  But if I had to choose between that set of patches
vs. the time we spent on non-programming activites, I would choose
the non-programming activities in a heartbeat.  I think that
fostering a feeling of community is the best way to keep lilypond
around for the long term.

That said, I _do_ agree that fostering the community is not the
*only* goal that should be considered.  Not wasting development
time is another goal.  That's precisely why I thought that "fluffy
discussion" should take place on another list.


Think back to having breakfast around the kitchen table in
Waltrop.  Suppose I said "hey, I wonder if we could create some
way to help users avoid being confused by whether a \command would
apply to the note before or the note after?".  I think in that
environment, we could casually chat about possibilities without
anybody freaking out that I was going to jump into git and push
some hacks to the parser.

*That* is the type of environment I want to create.  I want to
retain some of the magic of Waltrop, some of that feeling of
*community* rather than an antagonistic "you're wasting my time"
or "your patch breaks XYZ" that we see so often on lilypond-devel.


> I think that what Han-Wen and David are trying to tell you is: yes, we
> could do with some language cleanups.  Here's how you can help.  Start
> working on the parser.  Changes small things, make it better.  Once you
> finally work yourself up to the authority level of Jan, you're probably
> still not in a position to propose and judge big changes.  But keep up
> the good work.  Good luck!

I disagree.  I do not think that musicians have nothing valuable
to say.  I *especially* do not agree that documentation writers or
teachers (in person) have nothing valuable to say.

- Graham