Re: Issue 1294 - Lyric ties

[Graham Percival]

On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 12:23:51PM -0800, Patrick McCarty wrote:
> However...  I'm almost certain that this is an issue with the build
> system.  Do we really want to block 2.13 for a font-related build
> system regression?  There are other build system regressions, notably
> when we bumped Pango from 1.24.4 to 1.26.0.

Bug reports, please.

> Over time, I'm starting to believe that some regressions were
> introduced between Guile 1.8.0 and 1.8.7, too.

Bug reports, please.

> I am willing to bump this back to a critical regression, since it *is*
> a regression.  But the question is if it should block a stable release
> or not.

I don't understand that comment.  If it's Critical, it blocks a
stable release.

Look, I don't know, or care, what a lyric tie is.  I haven't
investigated whether it works or not, and I'm not going to because
I don't have enough time while being doc meister, patch meister,
release meitser, and everything else I do.  As far as I'm
concerned, two reputable developer/contributors (Phil, the Bug
Meister, and Patrick, a font guru extroardinare), have reported
that something which worked in 2.12.3 does not work in 2.13.49.
Boom, it's a Critical issue.  I don't care if it's a GUB problem
or a guile 1.8.7 problem or a scm/font-thingie.scm problem.  It's
a Critical issue.

We have two ways of making it not a Critical issue:
1) make the output the same.  If that means fiddling with the
release-2.14 branch of GUB, fine.  If that means changing stuff in
lilypond git, fine.  If that means six weeks of making GUB master
compile, the testing, then fixing bugs, then more testing, then
more fixing bugs, then extra patches against ghostscript, then
more testing, then finally merging GUB master to release-2.14 and
then *not*. *touching*. *the*. *build*. *system*., then fine.

2) metaphorically look our users in the eye and tell them that we
no longer support that feature.  This means adding the following
line to Documentation/changes.tely:
  @item Lyric ties are no longer supported.

I'll give a LGTM to any such patch.  Other developers --
particularly anybody who writes vocal music -- may disagree, and
I'm not going to quibble to any such disagreement.


But as far as releases go, that's the story.

Cheers,
- Graham