Well, I used Finale before LilyPond for 3 years and also created a score
with Sibelius. Actually making advanced progress with Finale or Sibelius
does require the manual, but for simple scores you don't need it. I'm
just talking about the first impression, not even real typesetting.
I think we should make the user to go as far as possible without written
manual.
Actually we needn't make LilyPond completely usable without reading the
manual. We just should make users not scared of using an environment and
style of computer usage completely unfamiliar for them. Make them
confident that they can easily create scores: trust us, just click on
this exe and write "c d e f" - you can do it.
Bert
Mats Bengtsson wrote:
Bertalan Fodor (LilyPondTool) wrote:
Most people (including me) never reads any documentation in the first
place. Starting to use lilypond (or any software) should definitely
work without reading a single word of the manual. People are
especially scared by the followings: making choices and reading
documentation.
Honestly, would you expect any user to be able to do any real-world
typesetting
with LilyPond without reading a single word in the manual? Even though
you have
done a great job in LilyPondTool, I still think there's a huge step
compared to using
a WYSIWYG program like Finale or Sibelius or ... Therefore, my
approach has
always been to tell new users right away that they will have to read
the tutorial.
(On the other hand, you probably need to do quite some reading to
produce the
desired layout using these commercial programs as well, but that's may
just be
my prejudices, I don't have any user experience of these programs. I
have played
from a number of ill prepared scores, though).
/Mats
_______________________________________________
lilypond-user mailing list
lilypond-user@gnu.org
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
