Re: easier LilyPond tutorial?

[Anthony W. Youngman]

In message <address@hidden>, Han-Wen Nienhuys 
<address@hidden> writes
> [please forward to appropriate editor development lists]
>
> Hi there!
>
> I have a question for the lily4jEdit developers.
>
> Yesterday Jan & I discussed how we could lower the barrier to start
> using LilyPond. One the things we discussed was a better way to start
> using LilyPond. Right now, this involves a newbie user
>
> * having to read the tutorial
>
> * learning the concept of text-editor, and learning to use it.
>
> * learning the concept of command-line, and learning to use it.
>
> * learning about debug-edit-compile
>
> For a typical mac/windows user this is a rough introduction.  We were
> wondering whether it was possible to provide something similar to the
> Emacs tutorial, where a user is really taken by the hand learning
> LilyPond.

Am I unusual? I must admit I found the tutorial to be not much help, and 
I have no trouble with a text-editor or the command line, but I would 
find your approach of very little help.

As for the emacs tutorial, I've *never* got to grips with emacs, and one 
of the reasons is that I find the entire emacs help system horribly 
frustrating to use. That presumably includes the tutorial (I guess I 
found it, and just couldn't get on with it).

I've discussed my ideas with Graham (and he thinks I'll be like everyone 
else and not get round to doing it ...) but I'm trying to write a 
tutorial that would suit me. The big problem I kept falling over when I 
was getting started was that there was nothing about "how to use lily". 
Loads of info (such as the manual) about "this is how you do this" and 
"that", but it was far too low-level.

Loads of information about how you use all the little bits, and nothing 
about how you put it all together to actually do something useful...

I've got hold of a piece that's copyright 1927 by Schubert, so I'm 
pretty confident it's out of copyright :-) What I intend to do is to 
include this as an appendix, but the tutorial will basically say "here's 
a working LP piece, this is how and why we've done it this way".

As far as I'm concerned, using the text editor is like using a word 
processor - it's a basic that we should be able to assume the user can 
do! Command line, less so, but it shouldn't be that difficult to give 
basic instructions. Again, to me, that's basic computer literacy, but 
yes I understand it being beyond doze people.

At the end of the day, the best way to learn is to have a guru handy 
nearby. Absent that, I personally find that worked examples are best. 
And one thing that lily lacks is a decent supply of full-blown examples 
(as opposed to fragments, which are there a-plenty).

Cheers,
Wol
--
Anthony W. Youngman - wol at thewolery dot demon dot co dot uk
HEX wondered how much he should tell the Wizards. He felt it would not be a
good idea to burden them with too much input. Hex always thought of his reports
as Lies-to-People.
The Science of Discworld : (c) Terry Pratchett 1999