Re: GOP2-5 - ly language discussions

[Janek Warchoł]

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 8:54 AM, Graham Percival
<address@hidden> wrote:
> There is some concern about users without technical knowledge
> talking about the language. To those concerns, I quote
>
>     If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather
> wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to
> yearn for the vast and endless sea.
>
>     - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900–1944), “The Wisdom of the
>       Sands”
>
> In other words, if casual discussions can draw people into
> considering language changes, those language changes will
> necessarily involve a technical implementation (after discussions
> on lilypond-devel), and if people are excited about these changes,
> they will learn how to work on the parser.

+1.
I think that i'm best at analyz> ** Mailing list
>
> I suggest that we have a separate mailing list to discuss wild
> ideas. Initially these will probably be about modifications to the
> ly language, but other candidates are mutopia, kickstarter,
> crowd-typeset music, closer ties with online music editors, etc.
> This mailing list will aim to have the casual atmosphere of a
> friendly discussion at a pub or coffee house. To reflect the "wild
> discussions" nature while maintaining a reference a pond of
> lilies, I suggest the name lilypond-quacks. A more mundane
> suggestion would be lilypond-casual-chat.
>
> These discussions on lilypond-quacks are not formal proposals, and
> will not be acted upon. In exchange, nobody on that email list
> will complain about technically infeasible ideas, wasting
> developer’s time, having to defend the parser, or anything like
> that. That list will welcome all members – there will be no
> expectation that people discussing ideas will be familiar with the
> parser, be capable of producing patches, or even will have read
> the Extended manual. The intent behind moving informal ideas to a
> separate list is to avoid causing programmers any worry from
> technically infeasible ideas.
>
> If an idea on lilypond-quacks seems to be well-liked and somebody
> wants it to become an actual part of the ly language, that person
> should create a formal proposal (or possibly work with a number of
> people to create a proposal together) and send it to
> lilypond-devel. However, they should be aware of the warnings
> under the “formal proposals” section.
>
> In addition to discussing wild ideas about the ly language, this
> list will also provide an opportunity to educate people about what
> is possible with the existing syntax. For example, I recently
> suggestion an "improvement" which could allow the use of accents
> and non-ascii characters in identifiers – only to be told that
> this is already possible! However, this education should follow
> the above guidelines about being welcoming, not expecting people
> to be familiar with technical details, etc. Sarcastic and
> disparaging comments about people’s lack of knowledge will not be
> welcome on this list.
>
>
> ** Formal proposals
>
> If somebody has a serious suggestion for a change to the ly
> language (with the exception of renaming internals, which we do on
> a completely ad-hoc basis), there will be a much more involved
> process. All proposals must be sent to lilypond-devel.
>
> Ideally, this will include a patch, examples of ly files before
> and after the change, at least two weeks of discussion (similar to
> GOP), etc. At a very minimum, the proposal must take into account
> previous relevant discussions on lilypond-devel, the Changes
> documents, and the Extending manual. Any omissions or mistakes in
> a formal proposal may be subjected to sarcastic and disparaging
> comments.
ing stuff and making good bug reports,
but if necessary, i'm willing to learn how to improve parser myself.
I'd just like us to finish the big picture/plan before i start
learning.

> But the first step to looking at
> whether something can be fixed is to gather information about the
> problems.

precisely.  let's talk about problems that we have, and then design solutions.


On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 12:06 PM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
> Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:
>> Any omissions or mistakes in a formal proposal may be subjected to
>> sarcastic and disparaging comments.
>
> No.  We may have problems getting to a reasonably common ground of
> communication and decency, but that does not mean that we should tell
> people it is fine to not even try.  The net result would be that the
> only people willing to work on LilyPond are rude and thick-hided.
>
> I'd rather say something like "Without the [quack] tag, proposals and
> discussions on the developer list have the implied consequence of
> leading to changes in LilyPond, so they will also be put under scrutiny
> by senior developers, taking time otherwise spent on development of
> LilyPond.  Don't waste their time by not bothering to check your
> proposals against the basic guidelines and information referenced
> above.  If you are not sure, use the [quack] tag."
>
> Since it will presumably happen that developers relabel a followup to an
> unsuspecting newbie, it might make sense to prefer the better known and
> less loaded [talk] tag over [quack] in order not to give the impression
> one is making fun of the original poster.

Good points, David.

I also agree with James that the lack of comments and feedback on
David's work stems - at least partly - from the fact that few people
understand it.
cheers,
Janek