Re: Remove old "News" entry from home page

[David Kastrup]

Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden> writes:

> 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.

Markdown has no way of integrating LilyPond images.  And Texinfo is the
GNU documentation format and LilyPond is a GNU application.

I certainly would not object to somebody adding Markdown to the formats
lilypond-book supports.  That nobody ever bothered to do so in all those
years is one indicator that there is not much overlap between people
wanting to use LilyPond and people wanting to use Markdown.

> However, who is going to transform all of our data?  Who is going to
> set up the build system?  Etc., etc.

And who is going to take over once all the original contributors have
left?  Texinfo is a well-documented and stable documentation format.  It
doesn't do much.  For my own documents I prefer using LaTeX.  But what I
do with LaTeX is writing _documents_, tied to a certain output device.
There is no good way of producing nice HTML from them, for example.

>> 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?

I think the idea is rather to split the documentation part into "proper"
manuals that are kept in Texinfo and "web pages" that are the frontend
of the web presence.  Basically everything that is currently to be found
in the "(lilypond-web)" info page and PDF and the various translations
is supposed to go away and be replaced by something written in something
else and maintained by somebody else.  As I understand the proposal,
none of the other documents would be targeted.

>> 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 :-)

That was not actually the argument.  The argument was that changing
everything to a different tool would draw enough new and old
contributors to the task that there would be a net benefit.

Graham probably has a few choice words about the effectiveness of
investing upfront work in the hope that stuff will become easy enough
that even the weak of heart will get hooked.

In the end, you cannot actually buy yourself anything from dozens of
people saying "I consider this a really excellent idea and it will
likely cause lots more volunteers to work on this even though I myself
cannot currently offer any time of my own."  Volunteers don't
materialize out of thin air.  They are almost exclusively regulars with
an axe to grind.  And their own axe typically takes a solid bout of
their time already.

-- 
David Kastrup