Re: Why do so many newcomers post to bug-lilypond?

[Graham Percival]

On Mon, Nov 03, 2008 at 04:49:53PM +0100, Francisco Vila wrote:
> 2008/11/3 Toine Schreurs <address@hidden>:
> > Redundancy is not the solution. Yes, in general, repetition is a good
> > technique to become familiar with something unknown. The first read gives
> > questionmarks, the second one gives the Aha's.
> >
> > But it is almost impossible to maintain documentation if the information
> > is somehow duplicated over different locations.
> > The adagium "Single Point Of Information" is much more important than
> > Redundancy, especially for rapid-changing programs like Lilypond.

Yes -- especially when we're talking about newbies.  Should they
read:
- official documentation
- official FAQ
- semi-official wiki
- LSR
- search on google and look for random blog posts[1]
- search the mailist archives
- send an email to the -user of bug- list.

(this is my personal order of preference, BTW :)


[1] Hey, don't laugh -- I'm working on stuff in Haxe right now,
and their official docs are exceedingly terrible.  The only
progress I make is through reading random blog posts.  :|


> I don't think that an informal page like the one I linked needs to be
> in the official documentation, and it is not affected by changes in
> LilyPond.

I slightly disagree: we do need *some* kind of page like that.
After all, it's the most frequently asked question we get.

> Granted, there *is* an official FAQ page, but it is not evolving, it
> is outdated (e.g. speaks about sponsoring). We should remember it
> exists and maintain it, link more frequently to it... or use a wiki.

The whole website needs a Grand Project.  The 80% of the existing
faq should be junked[2], and the remainder should be *way* more
prominent.  I might even go so far as to say that readers should
be forced to read the faq before downloading.

[2] it could be put into a "secondary faq" or "advanced faq" or
something, instead.

Cheers,
- Graham