So far on the lilypond-user list, I have witnessed 2 website-redesign discussions. I gather there have been more in the past. Apparently the usual pattern for these starts when someone with web development skills, but no LilyPond contributor experience, looks at www.lilypond.org and thinks, "This place needs help. Have they not heard about $MYFAVORITECMS?" A sizable discussion results, with long-time LilyPond contributors needing to repeatedly explain that lilypond.org has a lot going on below the surface that is powerfully resistant to large-scale changes. After various frustrations, the would-be contributor usually gives up.
I like Urs Liska's idea of having a wiki or contributor guide entry for what LilyPond web development work requires. Then future proposals for website work could get a response with a link to the requirements, as routinely as lilypond-user reminders about Minimal Working Examples, and hopefully helping avoid further 100+ message discussions. Although I don't have great experience with the LilyPond project, I'll propose something based on what I've gathered so far, maybe it could go on Contributor's Guide 6.1, Introduction to website work. http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.19/Documentation/contributor/introduction-to-website-work Apparently the LilyPond source file is ./Documentation/contributor/website-work.itexi This is slightly repetitive of other parts of the Contributor Guide such as section 5, Documentation work, in keeping with the Guide's title page statement about contributors only reading sections relevant to them. ---- What you see in your browser at www.lilypond.org is not just a website. It is the product of a vast system of technical documentation. The documentation is written in a language called texinfo, which is standard for GNU projects. Texinfo allows generating different output formats from a single set of source files. This avoids needing different documents maintained for online information and printed manuals. Since there are currently 11 manuals for LilyPond, not including the translations, having a single-source documentation format is very important. At this point, LilyPond's texinfo output formats include HTML for the website, PDF for printing, and the Info format used by UNIX-like operating systems. Keeping information on the website updated is automatic, as the web pages are generated when the documentation is built using the GNU make system. But it also means that the web development environment is unusual, and based on texinfo rather than HTML and CSS. It is quite common for a skilled web developer to look at the lilypond.org website and reflexively propose a different system for maintaining it. Such proposals may have great merit when considering the website in isolation. However, the LilyPond project has limited resources for maintaining and translating its documentation, which makes up a major portion of the website. The idea of having to maintain the website apart from the documentation is unlikely to be supported by the developers and translators. Although there may be systems other than texinfo that would meet the needs for generating the documentation and website, there would need to be a compelling reason to make such a change. Simply doing the same thing in a different way is unlikely to be enough. This is a little like signage for highways and airports, where current fashions are largely disregarded in favor of long-established standards for presenting messages. Large-scale changes are rare and only done with great effort. For any such large-scale structural change to be considered seriously, it would almost certainly require that its proposer have a considerable track record with maintaining LilyPond's documentation and show evidence of long-term commitment to the project. But, smaller changes to the formatting and appearance of the website are also needed, welcome, and much easier to have accepted. If you have never contributed to the LilyPond project before, and want to work on the website, a good starting point would be incremental changes to the CSS file. This file can be found on the website at http://lilypond.org/css/lilypond-website.css or in the LilyPond source code at ./Documentation/css/lilypond-website.css The Texinfo source files that generate HTML for the website are ---- End proposal. Following would be the @example box with the file paths; perhaps the paths for CSS files just preceding would get something similar. Accept, modify, reject, ignore with crickets - I'll be OK. -- Karlin High Missouri, USA _______________________________________________ bug-lilypond mailing list bug-lilypond@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-lilypond
