Re: [Denemo-devel] A Transformation of how Denemo is perceived.

[Richard Shann]

On Tue, 2012-09-25 at 20:49 +0200, Federico Bruni wrote:
> Il 25/09/2012 20:18, Richard Shann ha scritto:
> > Denemo set out to be a GUI front end to LilyPond back in 1999.
> > With the increasing power of computers I have realised that it no longer
> > needs to be thought of in that way. It is now possible to think of
> > Denemo as a program with two windows, one showing the music entry system
> > the other the final printed score. By running LilyPond in the background
> > the typeset score can pretty much keep up with typing music in,
> > especially with single movement works. Even when it does not keep up, by
> > the time you look across to see how things are progressing it is
> > updated.
> 
> Premise: I'm not a Denemo user.
> IIUC, a typical Denemo user works with music-entry view and 
> lilypond-input: that would be the "front-end concept".

By lilypond-input do you mean "with the LilyPond view window showing"?
If so, then it would seem that most people are not doing that, since I
see that there is no preference available for starting up with the
LilyPond window open, and no-one has asked for it. The current default
is just the music-entry view.

> 
> You propose to have music-entry + printed score 
yes, by default to open the music entry and the typeset score
> (and keep lilypond-input 
> as optional).
as it is at present.
> The good point is that you'll see the nice output _while_ you enter the 
> notes.
And more importantly, you can see when you have done something bad, e.g.
forgotten to close a triplet, before you have gone on so far that you
have to search for the error.
Well, I say "more importantly" but the new idea I have had is that
seeing the final typeset score as you enter the music may have a big
psychological impact on the user: they have a better sense of what it is
that they are creating while they are creating it. At present it is
somewhat a leap of faith, you enter the music trusting that in the end
you will get a nicely typeset score. I am not sure yet whether I will
prefer to work that way, but for people coming newly to the program it
will have a big impact I think.
> 
> > So Denemo becomes a program which differs from the conventional wysywyg
> > programs only in how you edit the music - you can even click on a note
> > in the typeset version and edit it directly using pc-keyboard or midi
> > keyboard.
> > Of course, the option of editing the LilyPond text is still there, but
> > most users will never do that.
> 
> Are you sure?
In terms of numbers-of-people yes I am quite sure - there are very
rarely questions from LilyPond-aware users. That is not to say that
catering for the largest number of people is my priority, I am much more
interested in the LilyPond-aware users as they can expand the range of
LilyPond snippets captured into Denemo commands - I would love to have a
gui for setting up the beaming, for example, or for positioning/padding
tweaks - I just haven't got round to doing it myself. The largest number
of users are only really of interest to me because they can report on
regressions - we have no way of detecting regressions. (An example, the
current release has just regressed the ability to input multiple verses,
and the mark placed when doing point and click from the typeset output
to the music-entry view. And that is just the regressions which I have
reported!)
> I think that it's the main feature of Denemo, because I see it as a sort 
> of trade-off for people who don't like text input but still want to have 
> full control over the score output (and you probably have to tweak the 
> lilypond input in this case).
I do not wish in any way to diminish its use as a front end for those
who want to edit the LilyPond further - indeed, I think adding
continuous update of the LilyPond window would be a good thing, as well
as creating a preference to open it at startup along with the
music-entry window. What Denemo has to offer for LilyPond users is the
ability to transcribe hundreds of bars of music faster than anything
else I have heard of, by leveraging the user's music-reading ability.
(This is the whole business of entering the rhythm of the piece in a
continuous manner, similar to playing the piece, and then playing the
notes on a midi-keyboard over the top).
Once the bulk of the notes are in, a LilyPond user may well wish to take
that text and use their own naming convention (rather than Denemo's
stilted machine-oriented names \MvmntIVoiceII etc) and create a
hand-crafted text.

HTH

Richard