Thank you for your generous reply. I am surprised that you think that newcomers (or anybody else) find the list unwelcoming. I have always been amazed by the willingness of a few list members to provide detailed replies, and have rarely read anything that appeared to be unwelcoming.
I take your point that I myself am probably capable of answering some of the simpler queries; this is something I have very occasionally done and shall endeavour to do perhaps more frequently in the future. But as I receive digests rather than individual posts to the list, it is often the case that the alacrity of other members has meant that the question is answered even before I see it. I did once try changing my list settings to receive each separate post, but found it unmanageable: even with the digest, there are often quite a number of emails in one day: last Thursday there were 15 digests containing 67 separate messages, though I admit that that was exceptional. So once again, thanks again for your kind remarks; and thanks to you and all the other list members who rarely, if ever, resort to RTFM, and who never tell anybody to stop asking stupid questions - even in this case, where my question really was pretty stupid! David On Sun, 2018-04-29 at 10:53 +0200, David Kastrup wrote: > > > David Sumbler <da...@aeolia.co.uk> writes: > > > > > > > > > I must apologise to the list members for wasting their time by > > asking > > my latest question (below). I can only put it down to a "senior > > moment", which is quite worrying, as such incidents do seem to be > > getting more frequent. Or perhaps it is a side-effect of the low- > > dose > > Amitriptylene I am taking for back-related leg pain. > > > > When I came across the spacing problem I asked about, I was editing > > the > > layout of a 25-page score that I originally entered into Lilypond > > only > > 3 weeks ago. I had a vague notion that I had once asked about a > > similar problem on the list, and I spent some considerable time > > searching the list archives but without finding anything relevant. > > I > > also, of course, searched the snippets, also without finding > > anything > > helpful. Hence I decided to ask the list members if they knew of a > > solution. > > > > This morning I woke up earlier than usual, and found that I knew > > the > > answer and why I had the feeling that I had visited this problem > > once > > before. The solution is, apparently, one that I had worked out for > > myself. The embarrassing thing to admit is that it was at the very > > point in the music that caused me a problem when adjusting the > > layout. > > In other words, it was only about 3 weeks ago that I solved the > > problem for myself in relation to the very bar that caused me to > > post > > yesterday. > So now the other list members got to see a summarized solution. > > Looks like a whole lot less time waste than average on the user > and/or > bug list where we frequently go through the pattern of "but something > on > the Internet says different", partially including genuine > documentation > pertaining to different version, countered by pointing to prominent > parts of the pertinent manual, followed by "then your search engine > optimization strategies suck, it's all your fault, and you should be > ashamed" for some fuzzy value of "you" apparently not including the > original poster himself. > > And of course, after this has repeated a few hundred times, newcomers > complain about the list being unwelcoming because of a marked lack of > enthusiasm. A good degree of my work is invested in squashing > questions > before they arise which I tend to be more graceful at than answering > them. Documentation work is essential but only somewhat effective > since > many questions are often already answered in some reasonably useful > manner in the documentation and of course it is additionally > frustrating > for the documentation writer to see that work go unnoticed. Making > LilyPond simpler to work with, if it can be achieved, usually offers > better payoff, but a lot more people are well qualified to improving > the > documentation or, short of that, answering questions in a reasonably > nice manner on the list. > > What I wanted to say: you're good. Like, really good. Answer one of > the more obvious questions, and you're probably offsetting five > questions of yours with regard to causing fatigue to others. _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
