Re: hurdles for contributors (was: help wanted, I mean it)

[Trevor Daniels]

Graham Percival wrote Saturday, July 11, 2009 12:30 AM


> On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 05:50:54PM -0500, Tim McNamara wrote:
> > I'm sorry to say it but there are an awful lot of hurdles to get 
> > over in
> > learning to use LilyPond and then even more in trying to 
> > contribute to
> > it. I think I see why there are fewer contributor than Graham and 
> > Patrick
> > etc. would like:  being a contributor comes with a learning curve 
> > that
> > many of us just do not have time to master.  I think there'd be 
> > more
> > contributors if contributing was a simple process (and not so
> > Linux-centric): installing git and all its myriad dependencies, 
> > learning
> > texinfo, etc.  I simply don't have time for all that.  I'm happy 
> > to write
> > text, revise text, proof-read etc. for the Web site and the docs, 
> > but I'd
> > submit anything in text or HTML.
>
> I've bitterly cursed the move to git ever since it happened.  :(
>
> I don't mind asking contributors to learn a bit of texinfo, since
> 95% of the time, they don't need to actually use any texinfo
> commands; they can just edit the text in the file.  And, as
> Jonathan pointed out, the most important thing is the plain text;
> some people (like him) are willing to add any special texinfo
> formatting required.
>
> During GDP, I didn't require people to use git; I provided them
> with texinfo source files.  They edited the files (again, mostly
> just the text, while ignoring the special commands), then I took
> care of the git side.  It wasn't _too_ much work, although I
> wouldn't want to be doing it on a regular basis.  But if there was
> a limited-time X-month project, I might do it again.
>
>
> Trevor Daniels might have an interesting opinion on this; he's
> another retired British windows user, who started off during GDP
> (and has said on multiple occasions that he would have never
> started contributing if he had to use git).  Now he's on git (he
> wrote the "git on windows" section.

I did find git a bit of a challenge at the start,
mainly due to the jargon it uses and the poor
explanations in the documentation.  Once understood,
it's actually quite easy.  And, like Francisco, I now
use it for non-LilyPond work too.

I've not been so active in LP doc work recently as I'm
migrating a choral website I maintain to php 5 and xml,
and I can't leave it in a half-completed state for long.
I wish I could simply upload my changes to the hosting
site with a git push rather than ftp!

When that's finished I shall get back to the LM, as I
promised.  For that, I'd be happy for contributors to
send me small changes as straight text, but any major
changes would have to contain texinfo mark-up.  There
would be no need for contributors to install git.  If
a contributor wanted to work on a particular .itely
file I would make a branch in my local git repo for
them, send them the .itely file, replace the file with
the updated one in their branch when they returned it,
check it worked and merge the branch into master.  That
way it would even be possible for several people to be
working on the same file at the same time, as if they
were using git themselves.  Making individual-specific
branches is the key to doing this easily and safely.

Tim, if this is more acceptable to you, and you'd like
to work on sections in the Learning Manual, let me know
and we could start now.

Trevor