Re: Do we really offer the future?

[Johan Vromans]

On Fri, 17 Apr 2015 15:03:19 +0200
Urs Liska <address@hidden> wrote:

> The questions came in various variants of "why should a publishing house 
> use LilyPond?" And despite all the reasoning and writing I have produced 
> over the last years I didn't always find "the" striking key features 
> that were convincing in the concrete situation.

Déjà vu all over again...

Why should serious businesses use Unix?
Outcome: they didn't.

Why should serious businesses use LaTeX instead of MSO?
Outcome: they didn't.

Why should serious businesses use Linux instead of Windows?
Outcome: they didn't.

The LilyPond versus Sibelius/Finale/... case is very similar to LaTeX versus
MSO. Both LP and LaTeX (can) produce superior results, but have a weird way
of working -- at least, in the eyes of many. For us, command line driven
programming may feel normal, but for the rest of the world it is not, and
in my belief it will never become broadly accepted.

I did some book productions for a big publisher. I convinced them that I
would be delivering high-quality camera-ready materials. They didn't care
how I did it, what tools I used, even though my results looked better than
theirs.

Bottom line: Let's have fun the way *we* do it. Let's show the world the
beautiful scores we make. If people wants to join us, let's welcome them
and guide them patiently through the learning curve. And enjoy.

-- Johan