Re: Sponsoring lilypond development Was Re: Score parts: instrument and duration

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

Trevor Baca wrote:
> I think that stealing (or courting?) the SCORE users is an excellent
> idea; they're not in the slightest bit adverse to really learning the
> most detailed internals of a program and would probably bring an
> excellent eye to some of the very real problems we're tackling right

> now in LilyPond development: the tie problem is only the most recent
> example.

(plug)

Yes - we only need a tiny bit more of money! please contribute!

> Just mail to address@hidden ; the list is run by Gordon Callon in
> Canada. Quite unfortunately there are no list archives :-( but, quite
> happily, the list is responsive, open and professional (much like our
> own, really).

Is this a conscious decision? It's easy to have a list archived 
(including spam-protecting addresses) through mail-archive.com or gmane.org.

> > > We could steal the users directly from there... But for this to
> > > happen, we would have to reverse engineer the SCORE format.
> >
> > hum, it's a binary format right? I've forgotten that.

The point of SCORE is that everything can be very easily tweaked 
heavily, which is excellent for professional engravers. All those tweaks 
get lost if the .pmx is imported. Since the majority of time in SCORE is 
spent tweaking, I don't think importers matter much.

> So, the obvious point here is that LilyPond absolutely excels at all
> three of SCORE's major weaknesses:
>
> 1. LilyPond runs on absolutely everything under the sun
>
> 2. LilyPond has absolutely no memory or size limitations at all,
> AFAICT; I render Lily scores with several thousands glyphs per page on
> tabloid paper all the time and nothing ever breaks (well ... so long
> as you turn off point-and-click!); there's absolutely *no*
> circumstance under which Lily users have to separate out musical
> material into separate files to accomodate an extramusical technical
> requirement

(as long as you have obscene amounts of memory, that is)

> 3. Lily is also developed by a genius ... 

::-))))

> but a genius pursuing the
> exact *opposite* political approach to code access and the development
> cycle: Lily's not going anywhere, the sources are all available
> forever, new releases show up constantly, and the only barrier to
> contribution is the learning curve
>
> So it should be clear by now where I stand: I think it's an obvious
> transition for SCORE users to start moving over the Lily. They're
> reluctant to give up the tool, of course, because of its
> sophistication, but I think that literally every 2 or 3 weeks the
> reasons to jump to Lily increase, even for the community of
> professionals currently working in SCORE.

I think there is a one big problem with going to LilyPond for the 
majority of SCORE users. Adding a tweak is clumsy, and you have to rerun 
the program to see the result. Also the result of a tweak is less 
predictable, as anything besides extra-offset might impact spacing, line 
breaking, etc.  Also, working with multi-page documents is a nightmare, 
since page breaks are hard to get right.

Practically speaking, I think Lily can only practically replace SCORE 
for single staff pieces. And then the placement of hairpins should 
definitely be fixed.

> I considered crossposting this response to the score list (again,
> address@hidden, if anyone's interested) but thought it might be more
> appropriate to let discussion run private to Lily for a while longer.
>
> Another reflection: I feel certain that some type of constructive,
> even semi-formal dialogue is possible with the SCORE community. The
> wealth of accumulated knowledge there is almost unbelievable: if
> you're looking for exact answers to questions of tie placement, slur

You're welcome to point the SCORE people to the LilyPond website and 
perhaps this discussion. So far, of them I've only met Matanya Ophee in 
cyberspace a couple of times, and (almost needless to say), I can't say 
that I found the encounter constructive. I  recently subscribed to the 
SCORE list, but for political reasons, it would be better if someone 
else would point them to the discussion.

> placement, hairpin positioning on the horizontal, accidental
> tesselation before complex chords, the SCORE people are a good place
> to talk. I don't have the time to moderate that discussion right now
> myself, but I have to imagine that there should be some way to welcome
> that knowledge into Lily and help our own growth here.

--

Han-Wen Nienhuys - address@hidden - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen

LilyPond Software Design
 -- Code for Music Notation
http://www.lilypond-design.com