Re: Hushing up Sibelius news?

[Janek Warchoł]

Hi,

On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 2:30 AM, Adam Spiers
<address@hidden> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 5:22 PM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Adam Spiers <address@hidden> writes:
>>> I just blogged about this:
>>>
>>> http://blog.adamspiers.org/2013/02/25/music-industry-learns-nothing-from-the-avid-sibelius-saga/
>>
>> Well, I see some fatally flawed assumptions here, riding on your notion
>> "both MuseScore and GNU LilyPond would serve as excellent starting
>> points for a world-class music notation product."
>>
>> Now I can't vouch for MuseScore, but GNU LilyPond is anything but a
>> "starting point" for software development.  It is large with an
>> elaborate and complex architecture.  And most particularly, an
>> architecture that is not the core expertise of the former Sibelius
>> development team.
>
> I don't follow your logic here at all.  Being large and complex
> doesn't rule it out from being a starting point.

I think David meant that LilyPond already is a world-class notation product.
In other words, i suppose that he considered your statement about
"starting point" slightly offensive. (but i'm guessing now)

>>> Like it or not (and I certainly don't), a large proportion of people
>>> who need to notate music will run away screaming if you explain the
>>> compilation-based design of LilyPond to them.  I think
>>>
>>>   http://lilypond.org/text-input.html
>>>
>>> is absolutely fantastic, but some people's aversion to anything which
>>> looks at all technical seems unsurmountable to me (although I'd love
>>> to be proven wrong; after all, I still see "non-technical" airport
>>> staff happily typing cryptic commands into old-school terminals in
>>> order to query flight data ...)
>>
>> The staff is getting trained for that.  That's all it takes: training
>> and confidence.  Ask Janek.
>
> The problem is that LilyPond is notionally competing with products
> whose user-base don't want to spend time getting trained, and don't
> have to.  They're happy learning "on the job" via point-and-click and
> help menus.  Maybe one solution would be to enhance the help menus of
> a really good existing front-end such as Frescobaldi.

Since i was mentioned, i have to say something :)
My experience is that people with 0 experience with notating music and
limited skills in reading music (i.e. they weren't fluent in naming
the notes when they started) can learn how to input typographically
simple parts in half an hour.
Depending on your point of view, that's either vey impressive or not
quite impressive.
If you're interested in more elaborated answer, let me know and i'll
try writing something for LilyPond Report.

cheers,
Janek