Re: Remove old "News" entry from home page

[Werner LEMBERG]

As a preliminary I want to mention that in general I can imagine that
we separate the top-level entry page of lilypond.org from the texinfo
system.  Somewhere we could have a `doc' subdirectory, and from there
on everything is generated with texinfo as usual.

> I understand that having to learn two input languages is not
> optimal, but I don't think that it's a big problem.

It is a big problem.  Coherency of *all* documentation formats
containing exactly the same data is one of the most important goals
IMHO.

> On the other hand I think that it's safe to assume that few people
> out there know texinfo and many more know markdown or HTML. If we
> care for contributors...

Well, replacing texinfo with markdown *may* be possible, using pandoc
as the engine to generate PDF and info.  However, who is going to
transform all of our data?  Who is going to set up the build system?
Etc., etc.

>> What "tool for the website" will be maintaining literally thousands
>> of LilyPond code examples and the resulting images?  And if we have
>> people motivated to contribute to web-only documentation, what is
>> supposed to happen to the PDF manuals and the Info manuals?
> 
> I don't see any value in having the website in PDF or Info format

Ouch.  I almost exclusively look at the info page, and sometimes at
the PDF, but hardly at the HTML pages.

> and I'm pretty sure that at least 90% of lilypond users have the
> same opinion.

People grown up with HTML only don't know how a good and efficient
indexing system really works!  You want us to deteriorate our
documentation just for the sake of new, ignorant users?

> Current website is not mobile friendly and this is not good for SEO:
> https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/6196932?hl=en

I guess you are talking about the top-level page of lilypond.org,
right?  If I applied your sentence to the whole documentation, this
would be a rather silly argument.

> 1. All the persons who built the lilypond build system left the
>    project.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

While probably correct, it is irrelevant to the discussion.

> Who is going to fix all the issues related to website generation and
> translation?  Who is going to spend work on trying to understand
> something extremely complex which can be useful only within the
> LilyPond project?  I would not be optimistic...

But fixing those issues, if there is a *pressing need*, will be much,
much simpler than converting everything to a new documentation system!
Right now, it simply works.

> 2. We still depend on texi2html and the help request by
> Jean-Charles, who tried moving to texi2any, not surprisingly was
> ignored:
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2015-05/msg00032.html

The `non surprisingly' is polemic.  As you certainly know, if noone
answers on the mailing list, the request is not ignored, but nobody
has time or knowledge to help – I really would love to help, but I
also don't have time currently.  Just imagine that all developers
write I'm-so-sorry-e-mails for every request...

> I tried a very small contribution such as updating the screenshots of
> Denemo and Frescobaldi, but I was stuck and no one else did this
> apparently simple job:
> https://github.com/gperciva/lilypond-extra/issues/20

Ah, I wasn't aware at all that there is another bug tracker for the
web page.  This is unfortunate.  Please use the main bug tracker!

> Refusing any change because it's a change is not good for the
> LilyPond project.  It brings only to stagnation.

You are completely misinterpreting David.  He doesn't refuse changes
in general, but he reacts on weak points in your argumentation.  And
`let's do everything from scratch with a new tool' actually *is* weak
argumentation :-)


    Werner