Re: problematic commit

[Jonathan Wilkes]

> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2010 18:17:31 +0200
> From: Valentin Villenave <address@hidden>
> Subject: Re: problematic commit
>    
> 02fe038744e634b42f1a3377c4f0dc3d25e80344
> To: Neil Puttock <address@hidden>
> Cc: Lily devel <address@hidden>
> Message-ID:
>     <address@hidden>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 2:35 PM, Neil Puttock <address@hidden>
> wrote:
> > Well, to be fair, it's not the music function that's
> the problem;
> > rather, you've neglected to make `make-void-music' a
> thunk, which
> > means it's evaluated immediately music-functions.scm
> is loaded.
> 
> I had initially defined it using parentheses, because it's
> the only
> way to add a doc-string. But I thought it would be cleaner
> to remove
> the parentheses. Uh, ironic.
> 
> > Believe me, I understand your frustration
> 
> I don't think you do. (But that's another problem, I'm
> trying to keep
> it cool here.)
> 
> > but a change like this needs a more considered
> approach which I
> > don't think we can afford at the moment.
> 
> Sure. But you certainly do understand that my most pressing
> concern is
> the user-exposed syntax.
> 
> For the past two years my main occupation has been to go
> and visit
> music schools, conservatories, teaching facilities, small
> non-profit
> associations here and there in France, trying to promote
> LilyPond and
> convince people that they can *actually* use it. My whole
> sales-pitch
> is based on "Every musician can easily type note names:
> `do, re mi, fa
> sol etc.' Do not think of LilyPond as a programming
> language, think of
> it as the way musicians naturally express themselves!".
> Then comes the hardest part: "Okay, now open your text
> editor, and
> type, er, `\include "italiano.ly"'."
> I can't tell you the look on their faces at this point.

I'm interested to know how successful your sales pitch has been.  I did a free 
software talk a few weeks ago but talked mostly about Pure Data and Ardour, 
plus music-oriented distros of GNU/Linux.

If your audience cringes at \include "italiano.ly", what do they do when they 
learn how to put "ca." in front of a metronome marking, or change the direction 
of a tie after a line break?

-Jonathan