Re: OpenLilyLib (Was: Re: lilypond export)

[Urs Liska]

Am 14.06.2017 um 23:14 schrieb Johan Vromans:
> On Wed, 14 Jun 2017 15:44:24 -0400, Kieren MacMillan
> <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> Hi Johan,
>>
>>> When I visit https://openliliylib.org/ I get a page with text but
>>> nothing to click on. No links (except for the generic links (github  
>> Clicking on the GitHub link will take you to the current repository.
>>
>> Hope this helps!
> No, it doesn't.

Of course it doesn't. The Github link leads to an organization page,
which is not more than an uncommented collection of repositories.
Something most developers will be familiar with but not what an end user
will easily deal with.

>
> Clicking on the GitHub link will show a list of mysterious repositories.
> The only repo that makes sense is "openlilylib". Oops, it is deprecated.
>
> For the file exporter I seem to need oll-core, but this repo doesn't say
> anything about how to use it. Just scary warnings like "this code (and
> documentation) is currently in a conceptual state of pre-alpha quality".
>
> The OpenLilyLib web page talks about "Learn how to get up and running with a
> few steps" and "Browse the package list and search the full online
> documentation" but there is no way to actually achieve this.

The current state of what can be seen at openlilylib.org is the result
of commenting out the further functionality of a single-page (MEAN) web
application with which I got stuck for two different reason. On the one
hand I ran into learning problems when trying to populate my contents
from manageable files instead of hand-written JSON files. On the other
hand (and more fundamentally) the intent is to integrate openLilyLib
package documentation in the website, and that documentation system is
still non-existent.

>
> In particular, "Learn how to get up and running with a few steps" would be
> helpful, as would "Browse the package list and search the full online
> documentation".
>
> I don't want to sound negative, but I find this rather discouraging. 
>

Am 14.06.2017 um 23:26 schrieb Simon Albrecht:
>
> If there is insufficient documentation, and the whole project is in a
> kind of intermediary state that may indeed be confusing, that’s
> because Urs has been having other things on his mind, I think.
>

I would put that differently: the underlying reason is that the whole
openLilyLib thing is (apart from the numerous contributions to the
snippets repository) still very much a one-man show, and I simply can't
afford doing much more than what I really need for my own purposes. This
is a pity, but I must also say that with some notable exceptions any
calls for collaboration or support haven't returned significant feedback
yet.

Am 14.06.2017 um 23:29 schrieb Kieren MacMillan:
> Patches or other concrete contributions are gratefully accepted. 

That said, currently there are two distinct areas where any engagement
could be fruitful:

A)
I'd be more than happy if someone could help me or take over the
implementation of the website. Currently it is written as a
(artificially crippled) Node/Angular application, but I'm having
difficulties populating the datasets on the Node side.
I'd be interested in continuing on that track, but I'd equally value a
completely new approach, for example based on a static site builder.

B)
Together with Andrew Bernard and Matteo Ceccarello I've just started a
"project" with the goal of creating a toolchain to generate
documentation from openLilyLib packages
(https://github.com/openlilylib/oll-core/projects/1). This should be of
general interest as it will probably also produce a specification and
toolkit to create documentation for one's own files and libraries,
independent from the openLilyLib context.
This is a project that requires quite some discussion and planning and
later non-neglectable coding in to-be-decided languages (I'd guess
Scheme and Python). And I'd predict that this project is more likely to
succeed - and finally make openLilyLib accessible for regular use - if
there will be some collaboration/contribution.

Urs

-- 
address@hidden
https://openlilylib.org
http://lilypondblog.org