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

[Erik Sandberg]

On Thursday 18 August 2005 11.56, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> Erik Sandberg wrote:
> > This makes it hard for us to steal the SCORE experts right now. I think
> > it's too difficult to do this kind of tweaks in lilypond right now, and
> > the tweaks will break after each new version. (however, I don't know
> > enough about
>
> That's not true. However, I don't guarantee that they won't break -
> which is something different.

I was thinking about minor extra-offset tweaks, which make up for mistakes 
done by lily. You are almost guaranteed that they will break between 
versions, since layout bugs regularly are fixed in lily.

> > As you say, it could be useful to start a constructive dialogue with the
> > SCORE folks, to
> > (a) see what it would require (in terms of improved program design) to
> > make them join us.
> > (b) get inspiration from their engraving expertise.
>
> I think it should be the other way around. We need some samples that
> work flawlessly in Lily, but require a huge amount of effort in SCORE.
> That will persuade them to try Lily. Then, they can sponsor me for
> adding what's still missing :-)
>
> Of course, I might have a different perspective from you :-) 

I think we're talking about different things: you're talking about how to 
convince them, I just suggested what we could try to learn by talking to 
them.

I was assuming that the deepest SCORE gurus probably will need a way of 
tweaking which is as powerful as SCORE's. (disclaimer: I don't know the 
details of either SCORE's or lily's tweaking mechanisms). Perhaps this would 
be the equivalent of music streams for grobs, or a way to redefine engraver 
behaviour in Scheme. I don't know. In any case, they will probably be 
uninterested in switching unless they know that something sufficiently 
powerful can be implemented.

A fairly unrelated question is: Why are so many preferring PMX/MusiXTeX to 
Lily? I often have better chances finding good MusiXTeX scores on Werner 
Icking archive, than finding them on mutopia.

-- 
Erik