2011/8/22 David Kastrup <d...@gnu.org>: > I tend to tackle complex programming problems on paper first. According > to your rationale, this is unreasonable as the goal is to run them on a > computer. But paper better facilitates me thinking about the problem. > > When I think of a melody, one reflex is to scribble it down. Often this > is just dots on some lines, never mind the durations, stems, beams, > whatever. Lilypond is close to scribbling as you don't need to look at > what you are typing. With a WYSIWYG program, you are aiming, you are > thinking, you are arranging visually. That's disruptive. > > When I am composing, I want to think as little as possible about what > stuff will look like, or I lose focus. Lilypond is a help. Stuff does > not usually look right at first try, but that's not important. Making > things look right is something I can do when I no longer need to focus > on the music itself. > >> I wouldn't stand it if i knew for sure that LilyPond would never be >> accepted in the professional market. > > The end product is something that can be typed off if necessary, and > that's not my concern. I recently wrote an article about chromatic > button accordions with LaTeX and Lilypond-book, and sent the PDF. They > wanted Word files, so I converted some using LaTeX2RTF and prepared SVG > graphics (of the notes) and JPG (of the pictures) and messed around a > few days trying to get them unmolested into OpenOffice (hint: OpenOffice > does not import scalable graphics in any interchange format), having to > give up finally and sending the SVG separately. The editor managed to > work with that, and in spite of using the stuff at quite different > scales, there were no artifacts anywhere. I actually was rather > expecting to see some 72dpi JPG-based staircasing or whatever in spite > of the work I put in, but at least it would not have been my fault. So > this was a mess and additional work. > > But would I have written this thing using Word (and/or Finale?) or > OpenOffice from the start? No way. I can't work with that stuff. It's > completely alien to my way of thinking. And a steaming heap of > faltering crap, to boot. Whenever I actually work with some > "industry-leading" software, I am consistently totally thrown > off-balance by seeing a heap of user-unfriendly totally unintuitive > incoherent crap for which it is almost impossible to figure out how to > do things _properly_ (poking them with a stick until they look as though > they did is comparatively easy, but I can't do things that way without > getting ulcers). If there is a way at all. > > I don't get it what makes people pick market leading software. My > normal stance when I have never touched them is something like "I know > my own tools are peculiar, but I am familiar with them. I am certain > one could do things well-structured and in a user-friendly manner with > that commercial software, but I don't bother, since I got my workflow > reasonably set up using my peculiar tools". And eveerybody uses this > software, so it must be reasonably usable. And when I actually have to > do something with it, it is an incoherent, opaque, unstable crashing > pile of crap that does nothing right. > > It's like "Ok, I know it needs skills to have a TeX/LaTeX/Lilypond > workflow where no degradation of graphics and text quality occurs > anywhere in the processing chain, but I have learnt how to treat each > case, the hard way. This is a dinosaur, after all". So I take an > uptodate current professional market leading tool, and it blows it. And > people are used to and happy with it blowing it. And you look in the > support forums, and people know it is blowing it, but don't really mind. > > So no, I don't care what tools will be used for putting my ideas to the > final paper form. Anybody who does not like my tools can type them off > again for all I care. Since they are professional editors, they'll be > finished faster than I could do this.
These are some very interesting thoughts, David! The difference in our opinions comes from the difference in our jobs. You are a composer, i'm a typesetter - all my opinions were given from a music typesetter's point of view: i have something finished to work with, my job is to choose best layout options. You begin with nothing and create everything, you work on a higher level of abstraction - in this case i don't doubt that keyboard input and no WYSIWYG are very valuable to you! And yes, the amount of sucking in "professional software" is shocking! cheers, Janek _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
