Re: request to add the agostini drum style to lilypond

[Urs Liska]

Am 18.09.2014 08:38, schrieb David Kastrup:
> Frédéric Gohier <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > please find attach my proposal to add the agostini drum style
>
> That's without any documentation or rationale.  Nobody will be able to
> make use of it in this form or even discover it except by accident,
> making it a dead piece of code.

David,

you're right with what you say. But nevertheless it might be a good idea 
to provide the OP with a more helpful answer that will enable him to get 
his suggestion reviewed properly.
Even if it should turn out that the proposal will *not* be included in 
LilyPond it may well be that Frédéric will come up with suggestions in 
the future. But being left with *that* comment chances are "good" he 
won't bother trying to improve LilyPond anymore. And that's something we 
shouldn't afford.

@ Frédéric:
There is a formalized way to contribute to LilyPond, which is described 
in the Contributor's Guide (LINKs). From your patch one can see that you 
have the LilyPond Git repository and know your way around that, so it 
would be possible to set this up.

For a single proposal you can try sending a patch to the bug-lilypond 
list, but this is actually not guaranteed to be processed. This will 
only happen if someone explicitly picks it up and handles it for you.

Therefore you should write your email in a way to convince one of the 
developers that it is worthwile to process the suggestion. That means it 
should include a description of the patch, what it does and why you 
think it should be included in LilyPond directly (e.g. make plausible 
that it's a sufficiently common use case and not a private interest only).
Of course such an addition needs documentation, as David says. But it is 
perfectly OK to say that you'll write proper documentation when there's 
a kind of agreement that your addition may be included in LilyPond (but 
before actually submitting your patch for review).

And a final comment: if it should become clear that you won't get your 
addition into LilyPond you can still submit it for openlilylib 
(https://github.com/openlilylib/openlilylib). This is a good place to 
make additions easily available that for some reason or another won't go 
into core LilyPond.

Best
Urs


--
Urs Liska
www.openlilylib.org