Graham Percival wrote:
A couple of comments on the text at
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.13/Documentation/web/text-input#Text-input:
You never mention that you need a text editor.
Well, the windows and OSX lilyponds come with their own text
editor. I admit that I'm just assuming that linux users will be
able to draw the inference that they need a text editor, which is
no longer a safe assumption.
Looking at the download page for Windows, I notice that you say "If you
are happy with the GUI", but don't say anything else about how to find
this GUI. Perhaps the installation instructions should end with a link
to the Learning manual 1.1.3. Actually, the current installation
instructions are almost over-emphasized on the current web page. These
steps are the same as for almost any other Windows application so I'm
not convinced we need to comment on them. It's much more important to
focus on the things that are not common to a Windows user, namely how to
use the program. Once you add command line instructions, the focus of
the web page will be even less on the important stuff.
Answering your earlier question "Pretend that you've never heard of
lilypond. Does the webpage answer the questions, or present the
information, that you wanted to know before you got involved?", I would
say: definitely no!
Think of a Windows user who wants to try LilyPond. She will click on
Download, quickly locate the Windows logo and click on that and probably
miss the "Note: ..." at the top of this intermediate page. Then, she
directly finds the link to the installer since it's nicely located at
the top of the column, perhaps takes a quick look at the rest of the
text while the download is going on, just enough to see that it looks
exactly like all other installation instructions and then runs the
installer. Now is the moment that she might end up as a "where's the
application" question mark and there's no information at all on the
download page that's open in the browser. What's the next logical step?
Try to click on "Introduction". Again, no information on how to run the
program, unless you happen to look below the title "Why *not* to use
LilyPond?" where you have to click on "Text input" -> "Learning" ->
"Learning manual" -> "Tutorial" -> Compiling a file" (what is
"compiling"?) -> ...
Seriously, how can you expect anybody to find this crucial information?
At the Windows download page, I would propose to remove all the current
information, except the link to the installer, and replace it by the
nice introduction with screen-shots. At the bottom of the page, you can
add links to a separate page with the current detailed installation
instructions and command line instructions.
Similar comments apply also to the Mac page.
I have not followed all emails of this thread, so I apologize if all
this has already been said earlier.
/Mats
_______________________________________________
lilypond-user mailing list
lilypond-user@gnu.org
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
