Re: Future of openLilyLib

[Urs Liska]

Well, despite two of today's statements arguing otherwise I must say I
have come to a different conclusion. I have given myself exactly two
weeks to make a determination, and I realized I have obviously
overestimated the value and impact of my pet project openLilyLib. The
two weeks until yesterday since my (I think pretty strong and explicit)
statement did not trigger *anything* except one stupid and off-topic
discussion. So I realize there is no substantial need for openLilyLib,
and I don't have the resources left (in terms of time and mental or
physical energy) to push it forward without community support. And to
be honest, to include \shapeII into LilyPond or not is definitely not a
matter of having openLilyLib or not.

So today I copied all the relevant repositories to my own Git server
and removed myself from the corresponding Github organizations. I will
use what is there to complete three substantial projects I still have
on my desktop. Everything that is necessary to use and improve the
library and the packages is still freely available and appropriately
licensed, so if anybody considers it worth the effort they can do with
it whatever seems suitable. 

Best
Urs

PS:
Those few who know more about the background shouldn't worry too much
about the final character of this statement ...

Am Montag, den 21.09.2020, 17:24 +0200 schrieb Urs Liska:
> Hi all,
> 
> to begin with, I am of the (biased) opinion that openLilyLib is a
> powerful and useful extension infrastructure for LilyPond. There are
> a
> number of versatile and extended ready-to-use packages available,
> most
> notably probably edition-engraver, scholarLY and anaLYsis. But also
> the
> underlying oll-core is versatile and powerful, providing numerous
> building blocks without which I would not start any large-scale
> project
> anymore.
> 
> I can understand why this view is not shared by everyone, most likely
> simply because too much about OLL is obscure or unknown, lacking
> proper
> documentation, although the general introduction at 
> https://openlilylib
> .org should be a good start (and there are substantial manuals for
> the
> scholarLY and stylesheets packages, but only in (undocumentedly)
> self-
> compilable form).
> 
> At this point openLilyLib is completely dependent on my availability,
> at least because I am the only person with knowledge of the basic
> code
> in oll-core. 
> 
> For several reasons which I won't discuss publicly I will have to
> reduce my availablity to work on openLilyLib (and other stuff) and
> may
> be forced to completely withdraw at any point within the next years.
> 
> I would find it a pity if that would mean the end for openLilyLib.
> Therefore I'm looking not for a new maintainer but for more people
> engaging in the project, to build a community around it that can at
> some point continue without my aid.
> 
> The aspects needing support most urgently AFAICT are (in descending
> order):
> 
>  * getting more people familiar with oll-core (using the opportunity
> to
>    maybe improve the coding where appropriate)
>  * complete the documentation system in order to make a more complete
>    documentation feasible (here the most crucial part is integrating
>    consistently scalable score examples in the web site output).
>  * getting more people familiar with the coding of scholarLY
>  * do maintenance of everything, maybe throwing out some less-than-
>    useful packages
>  * write a Frescobaldi extension for managing (installing, updating
> the
>    library or individual packages, preparing documents) openLilyLib
> and
>    providing an API for secondary extensions (e.g. an annotation
>    editor/viewer or a tool to graphically insert editionMods).
> 
> If anything of this looks like your cup of tea you are welcome to
> contact me privately or discuss stuff on-list. Of course I am more
> than
> willing to help with any of these tasks.
> 
> Best
> Urs
> 
>