On 12/28/2022 10:17 AM, Amir Czwink wrote:
new contributions with (I'm sorry but thats the truth)
bad quality over proven ones, that have been existing since 2008 at
least, have been included into lilypond without questioning its
purpose
Producing sheet music for music traditions outside of LilyPond's focus
is only possible thanks to the efforts of contributors from those
traditions.
There are a certain number of active followers for LilyPond community
discussion on its email lists, the code review process, and so on.
I am unclear on how many people with skill in Arabic music are in that
number. I was not aware of your work, having only started following the
email lists in 2016 or so.
I know nothing about Arabic music, other than it seems to have more
notes per octave than what is used in music traditions descended from
Western Europe.
The only comments I have are about how to keep the "proven"
contributions prioritized over the "bad quality" ones.
Any time changes are proposed in a specialized area, it may be that the
specialist proposing it does not have views representative of all other
people in the specialty.
I think the LilyPond community then has 2 choices:
(1) Take the specialist's proposal at face value, beyond obvious and
immediate problems
As you say, "one developer decided to contribute his ideas and nobody
questioned that in the code review." Perhaps because nobody else
involved knew what questions to ask?
(2) Make the specialist's contribution wait for acceptance until another
suitable and unrelated expert can be found to review it.
"Looks good, but this patch will have to wait until we find someone else
to review it, who isn't your colleage, but is still well-versed in Tuvan
Throat Singing from past centuries in Mongolia."
I remember seeing a similar thing in past discussion on note heads for
shaped-note music traditions. A fine-details feature request was being
asserted as highly important, while I'd somehow spent my entire life in
said music tradition without even knowing the details in question
existed, and was unable to find them when I started looking for them.
<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2020-07/msg00229.html>
The fine details of mirrored-MI notes are possibly gone now.
Because, all the community had to go on was, "in the past, an expert
said it needs to be that way."
There were apparently few lasting references given to establish that the
claimed feature was representative of the entire music tradition in
question. When future contributors get to looking, and can't
substantiate the claim, it may well be disregarded if that expert is not
around to defend it.
The better we can document the reasons behind a change in community
discussions related to them, the better chances there are of future
changes deferring to the past discussions.
I commend you for submitting a merge request to improve LilyPond's
quality for Arabic music as you see it needs.
--
Karlin High
Missouri, USA
