Re: Request for feedback on 'lobbying' paper

[Urs Liska]

Am Samstag, den 20.04.2013, 12:13 +0100 schrieb Graham Percival:
> On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 01:05:40PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
> > Colin Hall <address@hidden> writes:
> > 
> > > Here is a piece of opinion from me, so you know my position. Users of
> > > WYSIWYG engraving software accept the shortcomings because it is quick
> > > and effective. Users of text-based approaches accept the additional
> > > effort required because they are perfectionists.
> > 
> > Actually, I tend to use text-based approaches not really because I care
> > about the perfection of the result, but because it allows me to properly
> > separate input, tool and output.
> 
> I haven't read the paper, but I'll chime in to say that I prefer
> text-based because then I have complete control over my
> "documents" (be they text, source code, or sheet music).  When
> using a GUI tool[1], my hard work is at the mercy of some magical
> process which may or may not save the data correctly.  If I want
> to view my past work, I'm at the mercy of those tools.  When I was
> a composition student, I found that my fellow students would give
> excuses about their scores about once a week ("oh, Finale put a
> dotted line over those notes, but I couldn't figure out how to
> remove it").
> 
> [1] yes, a few GUI tools save data in a human-readable format, but
> those are unfortunately rare.
> 
> 
> By contrast, using a text-based tool (especially in conjunction
> with source control such as git) leaves me in control.  If
> anything breaks (which it does occasionally), then I can easily
> compare the previous (working) input to the current version and
> figure how what I did wrong.
> 
> - Graham

This is speaking from my heart :-)

Of course it isn't fair to keep a judgment in one's heart that is based
on software more than a decade old, but my most prominent recollection
of my work with Finale is:
- Enter some music
- Make corrections: 
  - Move an object
  - switch directions (of stems, slurs ...)
  - break beams manually
- Hit "Update Layout"
- Tear my hair out because Finale reverted (as an average)
  half of my manual decisions.
  Then I didn't have the faintest idea that there is something
  like a 'text format' where such decisions could be
  stored explicitely

Urs

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