website draft 4, help wanted

[Patrick McCarty-3]

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 8:33 AM, Francisco Vila<paconet.org@...> wrote:

> 2009/7/6 Valentin Villenave <v.villenave@...>:
>> 2009/7/6 Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke-list@...>:
>>> Just by accident I looked upon Valentin's page, if only we would
>>> be able to steel the header images/gradient and possibly put nicely
>>> rounded tabs into the bottom of that header gradient
>>> [CSS stealing suggestion: http://tinto-taal.nl ] and also steal
>>> other rounded stuff?
>>
>> Interesting. Does that kind of accidents happen to you a lot? :)
>>
>>> Also, Valentin's page uses two nice basic colours, light blue-ish
>>> and dark-greenish.
>>
>> I don't know if you're referring to my personal website or the
>> news.lilynet.net website. Much less rounded stuff on that last one,
>> though.
>>
>> As for me, I still haven't managed to get over the
>> http://meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspiral/glassy.html that has
>> been posted here some days ago. Actually, this has made me want to
>> redo my whole website. No, actually, this has made me want to close my
>> website and never ever pretend I know a thing or two about CSS again
>> :)
>>
>>> A lot of [very important] work on content and structure has been
>>> done and discussed about, I'd really like to see some work/proposals/
>>> discussions on how the site could look/feel, looking through your
>>> eyelashes.
>>
>> The rounded thingy I used is actually a JavaScript hack from
>> http://www.html.it/articoli/niftycube/index.html
>>
>> Firefox has native support for rounded corners, but it's not
>> compatible with other browsers, and the rounded parts are not
>> anti-aliased (and therefore look a bit rough).
>>
>> JavaScript hacks are ugly, and should be avoided whenever possible.
>> Other than that, it is possible to make frames rounded by simply using
>> background images; however this cannot be used together with a
>> background radient. (And, hell, there still are 25% people out there
>> who can even display alpha-enabled PNG images correctly).
>>
>> Yeah, life sucks -- maybe I could use some of your Avatar thing right now :)
>>
>
> I'd like to suggest intermediate solutions like mozilla.com , it has
> rounded corners and gradients, but the background is mostly white.
> Background gradients can be nightmarish for designers, but
> partially-filled backgrounds with a limited-size image look beautiful
> and they are less problematic. Also, not everything is inside boxes,
> which obviously tend to be rectangular. That gives a general feeling
> of openess and freedom.

I would *love* to have the site looking like mozilla.com; it's too bad
they are using a fixed-width layout though.

I agree my layouts tend to be kind of boxy and that background
image/gradients can help replace this technique.  The problem I have
is adapting these techniques to the liquid layout we are using.

If anyone knows how to code rounded corners for the tabs on the top
navigation bar, please speak up!  I don't have that much experience
with these matters.

Thanks,
Patrick


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[Patrick McCarty-3]

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 6:27 AM, Jan Nieuwenhuizen<janneke-list@...> wrote:

> On vr, 2009-07-03 at 14:41 -0700, Graham Percival wrote:
>
>> Here it is:
>> http://percival-music.ca/blogfiles/out/lilypond-general_1.html#Home
>
> Okay, so this is starting to be really great.
>
> Now, I know you have not been spending too much work on the slick looks
> side of things, but do we have volunteers who are willing and able to
> make this look slick/crisp/attractive?  I feel we really need to
> present ourselves in a more attractive/eye-pleasing candy way.
>
> Just by accident I looked upon Valentin's page, if only we would
> be able to steel the header images/gradient and possibly put nicely
> rounded tabs into the bottom of that header gradient
> [CSS stealing suggestion: http://tinto-taal.nl ] and also steal
> other rounded stuff?

What's really awesome about tinto-taal.nl is that the rounded corners
are implemented with SVG images!

I wish all browsers supported SVG... Oh well.

-Patrick


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[Mark Polesky]

Patrick McCarty wrote:

> What's really awesome about tinto-taal.nl is that the rounded corners
> are implemented with SVG images!

I also like the layout of gimp.org.
Click their menu links too.
Nice looking site.

- Mark



     


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[Valentin Villenave]

2009/7/6 Mark Polesky <markpolesky@...>:
> I also like the layout of gimp.org.
> Click their menu links too.
> Nice looking site.

Since you're mentioning that, http://www.blender.org/ has a top-menu
that is very similar to the new Lily website's draft.

Regards,
Valentin


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[Graham Percival-3]

On Sat, Jul 04, 2009 at 01:49:42AM -0700, Mark Polesky wrote:
>
> I'm with Chip here. Explicit, unambiguous, fool-proof. Have you
> noticed the troubles I've had recently with abbreviated
> instructions? (: Assume nothing; assume the user is a robot.

I see an inconsistency here.  As far as we know, the first step
differs whether the OS is ME, 2000, XP, or Vista.  So this is
hardly "fool-proof".  In fact, I would suggest that the first step
is the most important one; after somebody has begun running the
installer, they are prompted by on-screen questions[1].

[1] I think.  I've never seen the lilypond windows installer, and
probably never will.


> I can't say for certain, but on Windows I seem to recall that the
> two uninstall options are not always the same? The rumor I hear the
> most often is that the uninstall.exe provided by the program
> usually knows how to uninstall the program (and all of its
> potentially disjunct files) better than the control panel uninstall
> function, which may accidentally leave some distant files undeleted
> (perhaps not a big issue with LilyPond, though).

I would expect the control panel uninstall to call the program's
uninstall.  Could somebody look into this?


As I said before, I'm not particularly interested in the windows
instructions.  But inconsistency bugs me; if you want to explain
every single step, then make sure you explain every single step in
every single Windows version.  I suspect that this might result in
isntructions which are long, confusing, and intimidating... but I
leave the choice of this page up to windows users.
(not necessarily Chip and Mark; other windows users are more than
welcome to weigh in on this discussion)

Cheers,
- Graham


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[phorgan1]

Valentin Villenave wrote:

2009/7/6 Mark Polesky markpolesky@...:
  

I also like the layout of gimp.org.
Click their menu links too.
Nice looking site.
    

Since you're mentioning that, http://www.blender.org/ has a top-menu
that is very similar to the new Lily website's draft.
  

It was nice to see that the gimp.org site uses a different, less dramatic, but more readable style for the developers stuff.  I wish blender did.  Maybe people that stare at text all day need different styles than people that stare at images.  I personally am not fond of the apparently dying fad for dark dramatic web pages.  I'm not seeing as many as I used to.  For awhile they were everywhere!  For my 54 (in two day) year old eyes, the dark pages with light text are not nearly as usable as light (white) pages with dark text.

Patrick
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[Graham Percival-3]

On Mon, Jul 06, 2009 at 03:27:56PM +0200, Jan Nieuwenhuizen wrote:
> A lot of [very important] work on content and structure has been
> done and discussed about, I'd really like to see some work/proposals/
> discussions on how the site could look/feel, looking through your
> eyelashes.

I disagree; I think we've spent *too much* time on the look/feel,
and not enough on the content and structure.  This isn't because
I'm not interested in presentation (although admittedly I'm _not_
interested), but rather for project management reasons.

- the type of content (pictures, text, etc) needs to be settled
  before John can work on the translation infrastructure.
- the translation infrastructure needs to be settled before the
  translations can begin.
- the content and structure needs to be settled (or at least, the
  unfinished sections must be clearly identified) before the
  translations can begin.
- we should give the translators at least a month before replacing
  the current website.


Modifying the CSS files can be done at any time, including after
the new website is used as the "default" lilypond.org.  Other than
the lack of translations, the new website already beats the pants
off the old website.  New users can find easier faster, and avoid
getting confused, irritated, and sending silly questions to the
bug list.  Also, there's a few **very** nice pages (bug reports,
tiny examples) that question-answerers on this list can easily
link to.
(i.e. "please create a tiny example:
http://lilypnod.org/tiny_examples.mhrtl")


Yes, I know that you want stuff that's attractive.  I also admit
that Valentin's site is certainly impressive.  But I think the
needs of our community will be better met by getting this out
there ASAP, which will happen a month after we "finish" the
contents and structure.  (assuming no other delays)


Alternately, we could put it online in a week or two, but linked
as lilypond.org/doubly-new-web/   (in-joke), and dump a NEWS item
suggesting that English speakers might want to look at the new
website instead of the current one.

Cheers,
- Graham


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[Jan Nieuwenhuizen-2]

On di, 2009-07-07 at 23:26 -0700, Graham Percival wrote:

Hi Graham,

> I disagree; I think we've spent *too much* time on the look/feel

Yes, I understand that's how you feel. It's exactly why I sent my mail,
and why I reacted so strongly on this.

> Modifying the CSS files can be done at any time,

Well, yes, but it's a matter of priority.  We have different
priorities, and I need you to see that my priority list actually
makes more sense, from a certain pov.

> Other than
> the lack of translations, the new website already beats the pants
> off the old website.

...yes, in many ways it does...

> New users can find easier faster, and avoid
> getting confused, irritated, and sending silly questions to the
> bug list.  Also, there's a few **very** nice pages (bug reports,
> tiny examples) that question-answerers on this list can easily
> link to.

...yes, I very much agree and am very pleased with this.

> (i.e. "please create a tiny example:
> http://lilypnod.org/tiny_examples.mhrtl")

Hmm, this link does not work for me?

> Yes, I know that you want stuff that's attractive.

Indeed.  And I hope you also want it, but currently you don't think it's
all *that* important.  Right.  Now.

Although it could [partly--you agree valentin's site is slick] be a
matter of taste I think this mainly depends all on what or whom one
thinks the website is for.

What is the main public you have in mind when you set your priorities
for the website?

I think there are a couple of distinct groups that we [c|sh]ould target

   1. potentially a new user
   1a. potentially new promotor (i found this site about printing music,
       I don't do any music but it looks to be just the thing for you!)
   2. a fresh novice user, still not sure if she will keep using it
   3. an lilypond addict

Looking at our future user base, I feel that 1 is *by far* the largest
and most interesting group [oops, should I post this to lilypond-user?
ouch]

I mean, if we somehow manage to scare off all people in category 1,
our community will stop growing?

In an slightly indirect way, the best thing we can do for our current
users, be it a category 2 or 3 user, is to grow our community?

In our current culture, things seem to be speeding up, esp. the
internet experience often enjoys very short attention moments.
When you are looking for something, the internet can be very big,
you do not have the time to explore everything in depth.  Sometimes,
you only take a few seconds to decide: this thing is crap, this
this may be it.

I feel we really need to attract as much attention to what we
have to offer (free, superior quality music typestting with
excellent support -- something like that) as we can -- and
we at least need to have people of category 1 have some
positive doubt about this--even if they only view the front
page.

If we cannot attract potential new users (people who have
not heard of lilypond in a way that is so positive they
already want to spend at least half an hour on it), we
lose them.  Think aida:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA_(marketing)

So, what I would like, is to A) have a front page where at
first glance, as many category 1 persons as possible will
hold in their tracks long enough to find I) just the right
next page to read, and D) get more interested.  Be it
the essay, the crash course, tiny or complex examples.

Then, we must think of ways to satify 2 and 3, while keeping
1.  This is where interesting, renewing (NEWS) content
comes in.  Esp. for category 2, structure is very important,
for category 3, content is probably the most important thing.

Do I make any sense?  I do not want to force anything on
you, I really like what you already did, it is very important
and it is probably impossible to make something that looks
good without sensible content.  However, please reread this
rant until you can freely decide to take over my priority list? :-)

Possibly we can get Valentin to step over his 'there
are cool things I cannot do with css, I cannot do anything'
and hack a CSS + header + margins that are as crisp as
http://news.lilynet.net in just a day or two.  And I mean,
do we have big mentioning, pictures/screeshots from his opera?
How professional can we look?

Valentin's site attracts my initial attention and gives a professional
feel.  Much more than both the lilypond.org sites.  Possibly he/we
could/should  merge this site even with lilypond.org.  I don't know.

Greetings, thanks,
Jan.


--
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@...> | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
Avatar®: http://AvatarAcademy.nl    | http://lilypond.org



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[Valentin Villenave]

2009/7/8 Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke-list@...>:
> Valentin's site attracts my initial attention and gives a professional
> feel.  Much more than both the lilypond.org sites.  Possibly he/we
> could/should  merge this site even with lilypond.org.  I don't know.

I agree that the very first look is important. (which is why I opened
#698 among others -- and right now I'm trying to reimplement the
EasyLilyPond concept in a portable way).

lilynet.net was originally thought, among other things, as a testbed
for a possible new lilypond website: the LilyPond project has
obviously reached an important turning point, where it is more and
more driven by an actual community; this is what John and I wanted to
emphasize with this website, as did Graham by launching the Frogs
group, etc.

I'm, of course, willing to help as much as I can -- for the past few
weeks I've been busy working on a LilyPond project with my pupils,
making video LilyPond tutorials in French, etc. But I'm much more
available now. (well, my laptop has just gone down again, but that's
another story :)

Anyway, I think we're living exciting times with regards to LilyPond,
and no matter how long it takes I do believe we're making history
right here :-)

Regards,
Valentin


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[Tim McNamara]

On Jul 8, 2009, at 4:54 AM, Jan Nieuwenhuizen wrote:

> On di, 2009-07-07 at 23:26 -0700, Graham Percival wrote:
>
> Hi Graham,
>
>> I disagree; I think we've spent *too much* time on the look/feel
>
> Yes, I understand that's how you feel. It's exactly why I sent my  
> mail,
> and why I reacted so strongly on this.
>
>> Modifying the CSS files can be done at any time,
>
> Well, yes, but it's a matter of priority.  We have different
> priorities, and I need you to see that my priority list actually
> makes more sense, from a certain pov.

I agree with Graham on two fronts here.  First, "look and feel" is  
less critical than content and organization at this stage in the  
development of the new Web site.  Second, modifying the CSS is  
trivially easy (assuming the site uses a separate CSS file, as it  
should) once the design parameters are settled.  And, third, I think  
that a badly written and badly organized Web site deters users far  
more than one which is not pretty.

My request, to Jan and others who are concerned about the look and  
feel, is to start writing CSS files that result in pages that look  
the way they think the pages should look.  Then let the list know  
about them the CSS so that we can have a look at them.  The look and  
feel are clearly not Graham's top priority here, so others should  
probably do this.


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[phorgan1]

Valentin Villenave wrote:
>
> Anyway, I think we're living exciting times with regards to LilyPond,
> and no matter how long it takes I do believe we're making history
> right here :-)
>  
That's exciting!!!  And I believe true.  And I believe that although
there is much credit to go around, we should recognize how Graham's
organizational pushing has been a big win for lilypond.

Patrick



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[Graham Percival-3]

On Wed, Jul 08, 2009 at 11:54:05AM +0200, Jan Nieuwenhuizen wrote:
> On di, 2009-07-07 at 23:26 -0700, Graham Percival wrote:
>
> Hi Graham,
>
> > I disagree; I think we've spent *too much* time on the look/feel
>
> Yes, I understand that's how you feel. It's exactly why I sent my mail,
> and why I reacted so strongly on this.

Trying to prompt me to work harder, I see... it's not necessary.
I was visiting my old university last weekend; my lower output
wasn't related to a lack of frustration.


> > Yes, I know that you want stuff that's attractive.
>
> What is the main public you have in mind when you set your priorities
> for the website?

In order,
- existing users who might be pursuaded to become contributors.
- new users who can't figure out how lilypond works.
- other people (such as my family) who don't know what lilypond
  is.

> Looking at our future user base, I feel that 1 is *by far* the largest
> and most interesting group

Ok, that's nice.  What, precisely, is your problem with the
extensive Introduction materials we have?

> I mean, if we somehow manage to scare off all people in category 1,
> our community will stop growing?

No.  Our community will die IF WE DON'T HAVE MORE CONTRIBUTORS.
That's why I put them at the top of *my* list.

> In an slightly indirect way, the best thing we can do for our current
> users, be it a category 2 or 3 user, is to grow our community?

As long as potential contributors can easily find info about
contributing, then I'll agree that adding more users is good.

> In our current culture, things seem to be speeding up, esp. the
> internet experience often enjoys very short attention moments.
> When you are looking for something, the internet can be very big,
> you do not have the time to explore everything in depth.  Sometimes,
> you only take a few seconds to decide: this thing is crap, this
> this may be it.

Then it's a good thing that our Introduction is so nicely laid
out.  Potential users can see at a glance whether they want to
read about Features, see Examples, etc.

> So, what I would like, is to A) have a front page where at
> first glance, as many category 1 persons as possible will
> hold in their tracks long enough to find  I) just the right
> next page to read, and D) get more interested.  Be it
> the essay, the crash course, tiny or complex examples.

I) and D) are already done!!!

> Do I make any sense?  I do not want to force anything on
> you, I really like what you already did, it is very important
> and it is probably impossible to make something that looks
> good without sensible content.  However, please reread this
> rant until you can freely decide to take over my priority list? :-)

No, that's not my job.  (see below)

> Possibly we can get Valentin to step over his 'there
> are cool things I cannot do with css, I cannot do anything'
> and hack a CSS + header + margins that are as crisp as
> http://news.lilynet.net in just a day or two.

I am accepting patches to lilypod-general.css.  Or rather, Patrick
will be accepting them.

> And I mean, do we have big mentioning, pictures/screeshots from
> his opera?

We already have a section for Productions, or something like that.
If users contribute material (that stuff goes to Jonathan), then
we can have a beautiful list, with pngs of notation, photos from
the stage, etc etc.

IF USERS CONTRIUTE MATERIAL, that is.

> Valentin's site attracts my initial attention and gives a professional
> feel.  Much more than both the lilypond.org sites.  Possibly he/we
> could/should  merge this site even with lilypond.org.  I don't know.

Content is separate from presentation.  If Valentin, or you, or
Flozzy the Fairy Funky Flutist, sends patches to the CSS
(including images to load from the css), that's great!


Now for *my* rant.

As I've said before, I stopped using lilypond 4-5 years ago.  Last
Fall, I briefly got back into improving the engraving of my old
compositions, but that stopped when I went to Singapore.

So why am I still around?  I'm really bugged by inefficiency.
Users ask questions, Mats gives the same answers over and over
again: inefficient.  So I improved the docs.

I decide to leave, but remember that it took me two weeks to get
my first patch, it was horribly frustrating, and it was horribly
inefficient.  So I started GDP to train my replacements.

Potential contributors can't figure out git, ask questions, we
have the same confused discussion over and over again:
inefficient.  So I started the CG.

Potential programmers can't figure out how to get started, and the
existing programmers have learned that most well-intentioned
offers of programing never pan out when they have to actually do
work, so they ignore all those requests about getting started:
inefficient.  Another reason to start the CG, and to continually
nag people to dump instructions in the CG.
(we direct new contributors to the CG, so that they can
demonstrate their willingness and ability to do work.  Then we
know that it's worth spending hours helping and training them,
rather than hoping that an unknown contributor will be in the
25-40% of new contributors who will actually stick around)


You know what kind of website I think we should have?  I think we
should have whatever website the community is willing to make.  So
far, "the community that's willing to make" a website consists of
me, Patrick, Jonathan, and Francisco.  Plus many others who give
suggestions... but when it comes to actually sitting down and
writing the content, hacking the perl, and whatnot, it's just us.

Which, in itself, is a horrible waste.  Every hour that I spend
working on the website is an hour that I'm not working on writing
instructions about how to make releases.  Whenever I retire from
building releases, I don't want my replacement to spend *another*
5 months trying to figure out how to build the regtests correctly
or run the upload script.

Every hour I spend on the website is an hour that I'm not
rearranging LM 1 and the AU.  You know, we had a sincere offer to
help write docs for alternate editors, 2 or 3 weeks ago.  But
*that* can't be done until I've made the space for that in LM 1.

Every hour I spend on the website is an hour that I'm not
investigating+discussing Reinhold's ajax-search stuff, which I
*promised* that I'd do "in 1 week" on June 23.

Every hour I spend on the website is an hour that I'm not checking
over the CG, which needs to be done before we can start GOP, which
is a (the?) prime time to gather more contributors.

Every hour I spend on the website is an hour that I'm not writing
another column for the LilyPond Report, which may or may not be
holding up the next issue.

Every hour I spend on the website is an hour that I'm not dealing
with the 58 emails containing material which should be added or
fixed in the docs.  (and yes, all your GDP graduates reading this,
I _am_ slightly miffed at you.  I spent a lot of time training you
21 people so that I wouldn't have to deal with this stuff any
more)

Every hour I spend on the website is an hour that I'm not starting
my own Tadpole stuff, which is particularly annoying since I was
really hoping to start doing programming bugfixes myself, this
summer.


Given all those tasks... and all the potential contributor effort
that's waiting for me to finish those tasks... it really doesn't
make sense for me to be gathering a list of productions and
nagging famous lilypond users to send pictures.  Which,
thankfully, I've offloaded to Jonathan.  But it also doesn't make
sense for me to be rewriting the Old News from the current website
into texinfo to add to the new website, but I'll probably end up
doing that.

In some ways, I actually cringe more when I see Patrick working on
the website.  Not because he doesn't do a great job of the CSS and
perl hacking (he *does* do a great job of this), but because he
could be working on so many other things.  CSS isn't hard; there's
dozens of users that _could_ be doing it.  But improving the SVG
backend of lilypond _is_ hard.  Nobody else is doing _that_.
Fixing build bugs in GUB is hard; you and he are the only people
currently working on that.  Frankly, if the really annoying
lilypond bugs like #34 (grace notes) ever get fixed, there's a
good chance it'll be done by Patrick.  So why the bloody mao is he
the main person working on the CSS?  We should get a relatively
inexperienced contributor / web-savvy user to do that stuff.


*That* is why I'm not going to spend (significant) time screwing
around with the appearance.  If somebody is seriously interested
in this task, I'll gladly mentor them.

You know the phrase "in a democracy, the population receives the
government they deserve"?  That's how I feel about lilypond.  The
community receives the program/documentation/website they deserve.

- Graham


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[Valentin Villenave]

2009/7/9 Graham Percival <graham@...>:

> Now for *my* rant.

Man, I wish you had kept that for the next Postcard :)

OK, now this has just made me want to get working on the Report again. (sigh)

Regards,
Valentin


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[Carl Sorensen-3]

On 7/8/09 6:27 PM, "Graham Percival" <graham@...> wrote:

>
> Now for *my* rant.
>
> As I've said before, I stopped using lilypond 4-5 years ago.  Last
> Fall, I briefly got back into improving the engraving of my old
> compositions, but that stopped when I went to Singapore.
>
> So why am I still around?  I'm really bugged by inefficiency.
> Users ask questions, Mats gives the same answers over and over
> again: inefficient.  So I improved the docs.
>
> I decide to leave, but remember that it took me two weeks to get
> my first patch, it was horribly frustrating, and it was horribly
> inefficient.  So I started GDP to train my replacements.
>
> Potential contributors can't figure out git, ask questions, we
> have the same confused discussion over and over again:
> inefficient.  So I started the CG.
>
> Potential programmers can't figure out how to get started, and the
> existing programmers have learned that most well-intentioned
> offers of programing never pan out when they have to actually do
> work, so they ignore all those requests about getting started:
> inefficient.  Another reason to start the CG, and to continually
> nag people to dump instructions in the CG.
> (we direct new contributors to the CG, so that they can
> demonstrate their willingness and ability to do work.  Then we
> know that it's worth spending hours helping and training them,
> rather than hoping that an unknown contributor will be in the
> 25-40% of new contributors who will actually stick around)
>
>
> You know what kind of website I think we should have?  I think we
> should have whatever website the community is willing to make.  So
> far, "the community that's willing to make" a website consists of
> me, Patrick, Jonathan, and Francisco.  Plus many others who give
> suggestions... but when it comes to actually sitting down and
> writing the content, hacking the perl, and whatnot, it's just us.
>
> Which, in itself, is a horrible waste.  Every hour that I spend
> working on the website is an hour that I'm not working on writing
> instructions about how to make releases.  Whenever I retire from
> building releases, I don't want my replacement to spend *another*
> 5 months trying to figure out how to build the regtests correctly
> or run the upload script.
>
> Every hour I spend on the website is an hour that I'm not
> rearranging LM 1 and the AU.  You know, we had a sincere offer to
> help write docs for alternate editors, 2 or 3 weeks ago.  But
> *that* can't be done until I've made the space for that in LM 1.
>
> Every hour I spend on the website is an hour that I'm not
> investigating+discussing Reinhold's ajax-search stuff, which I
> *promised* that I'd do "in 1 week" on June 23.
>
> Every hour I spend on the website is an hour that I'm not checking
> over the CG, which needs to be done before we can start GOP, which
> is a (the?) prime time to gather more contributors.
>
> Every hour I spend on the website is an hour that I'm not writing
> another column for the LilyPond Report, which may or may not be
> holding up the next issue.
>
> Every hour I spend on the website is an hour that I'm not dealing
> with the 58 emails containing material which should be added or
> fixed in the docs.  (and yes, all your GDP graduates reading this,
> I _am_ slightly miffed at you.  I spent a lot of time training you
> 21 people so that I wouldn't have to deal with this stuff any
> more)
>
> Every hour I spend on the website is an hour that I'm not starting
> my own Tadpole stuff, which is particularly annoying since I was
> really hoping to start doing programming bugfixes myself, this
> summer.
>
>
> Given all those tasks... and all the potential contributor effort
> that's waiting for me to finish those tasks... it really doesn't
> make sense for me to be gathering a list of productions and
> nagging famous lilypond users to send pictures.  Which,
> thankfully, I've offloaded to Jonathan.  But it also doesn't make
> sense for me to be rewriting the Old News from the current website
> into texinfo to add to the new website, but I'll probably end up
> doing that.
>
> In some ways, I actually cringe more when I see Patrick working on
> the website.  Not because he doesn't do a great job of the CSS and
> perl hacking (he *does* do a great job of this), but because he
> could be working on so many other things.  CSS isn't hard; there's
> dozens of users that _could_ be doing it.  But improving the SVG
> backend of lilypond _is_ hard.  Nobody else is doing _that_.
> Fixing build bugs in GUB is hard; you and he are the only people
> currently working on that.  Frankly, if the really annoying
> lilypond bugs like #34 (grace notes) ever get fixed, there's a
> good chance it'll be done by Patrick.  So why the bloody mao is he
> the main person working on the CSS?  We should get a relatively
> inexperienced contributor / web-savvy user to do that stuff.
>
>
> *That* is why I'm not going to spend (significant) time screwing
> around with the appearance.  If somebody is seriously interested
> in this task, I'll gladly mentor them.
>
> You know the phrase "in a democracy, the population receives the
> government they deserve"?  That's how I feel about lilypond.  The
> community receives the program/documentation/website they deserve.

Gee, Graham, tell us how you *really* feel. ;)

But I totally agree with you.  CSS should be somebody else, preferably
somebody besides either you or Patrick.

Thanks,

Carl



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[Jesús Guillermo Andrade]

Hmm, Hello everybody: I think this is my fifth post in this list  
eversince I joined you (a year or so from now). I have been watching  
the evolution of the thread about the need of contributors and I  
thought I might have give a hand. I'm not an engineer or a very  
skilled techie (I used to work with simple databases with some perl  
programs to reformat text into something else), I use latex since I  
was  a teenager and started with linux using one of the first versions  
of Slackware (when one had to do everything by hand with X /dev and  
the usual crashes everytime there was a new kernel module to install  
and test). Anyways, those days are gone by (I earn my living as an  
attorney), and I mostly work with Macses.
Im learning lilypond as I go as student of the Conservatorio Vicente  
Emilio Sojo and, well, if there is something I could do to help,  
please let me know. I can translate to/from spanish and perhaps help  
with some html. If I have to learn git in order to help, I'll try.


Thanks


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[Graham Percival-3]

Welcome!  Yes, please begin by installing git.  On OSX, this blog
post:
http://theappleblog.com/2009/03/10/using-git-with-os-x-6-tools-to-get-you-up-and-running/
suggests a git osx graphical installer:
http://code.google.com/p/git-osx-installer/

I haven't tried it myself.  I would actually be cautious about
using the GUI, if only because all the instructions in our
Contributor Guide are written for the command-line.
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.13/Documentation/devel/contrib-guide/index

If you can get git installed and working on the command-line, then
the other steps should be fairly easy (mostly cut&paste from the
CG).

Cheers,
- Graham

On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 10:15:30PM -0430, Jesús Guillermo Andrade wrote:

> Hmm, Hello everybody: I think this is my fifth post in this list  
> eversince I joined you (a year or so from now). I have been watching the
> evolution of the thread about the need of contributors and I thought I
> might have give a hand. I'm not an engineer or a very skilled techie (I
> used to work with simple databases with some perl programs to reformat
> text into something else), I use latex since I was  a teenager and
> started with linux using one of the first versions of Slackware (when one
> had to do everything by hand with X /dev and the usual crashes everytime
> there was a new kernel module to install and test). Anyways, those days
> are gone by (I earn my living as an attorney), and I mostly work with
> Macses.
> Im learning lilypond as I go as student of the Conservatorio Vicente  
> Emilio Sojo and, well, if there is something I could do to help, please
> let me know. I can translate to/from spanish and perhaps help with some
> html. If I have to learn git in order to help, I'll try.
>
>
> Thanks

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