Re: point-and-click default

[David Zelinsky]

Knute Snortum <ksnortum@gmail.com> writes:

> On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 7:13 PM David Zelinsky <dzpost@dedekind.net> wrote:
> [...]
>> But even if it is configured to work, it seems like a REALLY BAD IDEA to
>> have this feature enabled *by default*.  Or, if it is to be the default,
>> it ought to be mentioned VERY PROMINENTLY, so anyone installing and
>> using Lilypond will see it.  As far as I could tell, it is not even
>> mentioned in the Learning Manual.
>>
>> The reference manual does admonish users to disable the feature when
>> producing pdf output for public distribution.  But that warning is
>> totally useless if a user does not happen to read that (rather obsure)
>> section of the manual.
>
> My vote would be to leave the point-and-click as the default and put a
> mention of how to publish a PDF in the Learning Manual, with any
> necessary warnings.  In Frescobaldi, I use this feature all the time
> and there is an easy way to publish PDFs without point-and-click.  I
> didn't know about the absolute path names in the metadata, but that
> makes sense.  Thanks for pointing that out.

Yes, keeping it the default but including documentation in the Learning
Manual sounds like a reasonable solution.  But there should also be
instructions for setting it up, or a pointer to the part of the
Reference Manual that discusses it.  Although apparently point-and-click
works out of the box in Frescobaldi, not everyone uses Frescobaldi, and
it requires some setup to work with other pdf readers (e.g. evince), at
least in my vanilla Ubuntu distribution.  This is all extensively
documented in the Reference Manual, but not in a place anyone is likely
to see it unless they know to search for point-and-click.

-David