Hello again,
I've read all the comments that I've received - thanks for the support and
looking at my first attempt at a page. Here is what I think about the issues
that have been raised:
o ly, ps or pdf?
I think to go for all three. LY files are essential if people want to see how
to do a certain thing in Lilypond, reformat for strange page sizes, etc. PS
files are the easiest to print from Linux and may look better than PDF (one
less conversion process to go through). PDF readers as many have pointed out
are far more common than Ghostscript on other platforms, and I ran "Fur-Elise"
through ps2pdf, took it on a disc to my Acorn RiscOS machine (an entirely
different operating system/processor, with no recent port of ghostscript but it
does have a port of xpdf) and it looked absolutely fine. I also think the PS
and PDF files should be zipped as this compresses them down by about 80%.
o Copyright
Although it's important that anyone can download, print out and copy the music
for free with no strings attached, we could also run into problems if people
start copying the music and selling it without giving us any credit. I think we
need a legal expert to think up a line or two to go at the bottom of the music
(possibly using the "tagline" option in ly2dvi) in the style of (perhaps
parodying) the typical "distributing is prohibited" but replacing it with
"distributing is permitted and encouraged as long as this message is kept
intact" or something. It also needs the (to be sorted out) web address of the
page and "created with GNU Lilypond".
o Search facilities
I propose to have the ability to search the site right from the beginning, and
will categorise the music by instrument(s), period (eg. Classical, Rennaisance)
as well as composer and piece. This way someone could opt to display all
available music to browse through, or do a search for example to just display
all the piano music, or all the classical violin music. I don't know who's going
to host the pages, I may be able to "borrow" some web space from the web design
company of which I am a part, or buy some more from the people that host us. I
could certainly put the "cgi-bin" (perl scripts which allow you to write a
searching program) on our server. The only problem ATM is that we are having
problems registering a domain name and getting the server working, but this
should be sorted out very soon.
o Werner's music page
I have had a look at this and it is fundamentally different from my vision for
Mutopia, especially in the respect that most of the music is created by
proprietary programs and so if you can't get the PS file going (trying to
format for different page sizes looks like a nightmare which beginners to the
web won't want to try) you are stuck. I'm willing to be in charge of Mutopia as
a separate entity, but I hope we can have an amicable agreement with both pages
having a link to the other one. Don't get me wrong Werner - your page is great,
but not the kind of thing I have in mind.
More comments are welcome - I'll try and get a revised beta of the webpage up
(with ly, ps and pdf files as well) at the weekend.
Chris
--
Chris Sawer - Sussex, England - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
