v. 2.11 for new users [WAS: Re: confused about transposing from treble clef to bass clef]

[Jonathan Kulp]

> There is a point in the development course from stable to next stable,
> where people should move to the current development release and forget
> the old one. These days too many people uses 2.10 and its old
> documentation. If a new user wants to start using LilyPond, I
> undoubtedly send him to current 2.11 which is almost 2.12, because not
> doing so involves
>
> - all you learn about 2.10 will become obsolete shortly.
> - all you learn about 2.11 will serve untouched when 2.12 "Rune" 
comes out.
>
> I think it is not a matter of caprice, I'm not an update freak that
> considers vital to update from "2.11.63.0001a-rc7.0" to
> "2.11.63.0001a-rc7.1", but this is not the case now.
>
> And of course this should appear prominently in the web page. I
> propose a semi-permanent news item telling people to start using 2.11
> with its docs from NOW.
>
> This does not apply in the early, rapid changing stages of development
> of a release, but it does here IMO.
>

I imagine that the reason many people still start out with 2.10.33 (on 
Linux at least) is because 2.10.33 is the version in the repositories or 
is even pre-installed in the distro (e.g. Ubuntu Studio).  For these 
cases there should perhaps be a warning about correct un-installation of 
the old version through the distro's package manager before trying to 
install the new version.  I recall once having troubles when I didn't 
uninstall the old version properly.  Hopefully the repository managers 
will accept the 2.12 into the repos soon after its release.

Jon
--
Jonathan Kulp
http://www.jonathankulp.com