Re: Openlilylib
On Mon, May 9, 2022 at 12:55 AM Andrew Bernard wrote: > Hello All, > > I've been absent from the list for a long time, but recently got CC'd > about an Openlilylib pull request. > > I must apologise for never getting around to updating the list on the > Openlilylib project status. Some time ago I took over from Urs who is no > longer able to do the work for private reasons I am not at liberty to > share. All started well and I setup a Linux server and a Wordpress site > and forum for the project. Taking over the code repository it had long > needed a large amount of refactoring, which I started but this proved to > be a complicated project for reasons I need not detain people with here. > > Then due to what can only be described as sheer stupidity I managed to > irrecoverably destroy my Linux server (it's a long story). What happened > after that is twofold. First, I am sorry to say that I was diagnosed > with the quite rare blood cancer Multiple Myeloma some ten years ago > now. It's fatal and incurable, though it can be managed well, especially > by the hospital here in Melbourne, Australia which has a world leading > research department specializing, amazingly, in the particular cancer. > So although I am doing well sometimes large software tasks become very > onerous and difficult, compared to before I became ill. Second, with the > difficulties mentioned, it seemed to me that I only ever got less than > half a dozen people signed up on the Discourse forum, and the project > seemed hardly worth the effort to continue, even though I do know there > are quite a few OLL end users. The sum of all this is that I have left > it dormant for such a long time. > > So at present there is no repository owner to accept pull requests, > > I am not really able to restart this project, and very happy for others > to pick up the ball. People are welcome to contact me for any advice. > > Once again, apologies for being incommunicado, and all the best to > everyone. > > > Andrew Bernard > Although I don't currently use OLL, I thank you for all your work on it, and I'm sorry to hear about your health issues. I hope you continue to have a productive, pain-free, and as happy a life as possible. All the best, Ralph -- Ralph Palmer Seattle USA (he, him, his) palmer.r.vio...@gmail.com
Re: openlilylib pull request
Le 09/05/2022 à 01:59, David Kastrup a écrit : Simon Albrecht writes: On 08/05/2022 20:37, Jean Abou Samra wrote: The case study of how OLL fell out of maintenance is one of the things leading me to think that a model where snippets providing significant functionality and becoming somewhat popular get upstreamed into the LilyPond core is a better fit for LilyPond than them letting them be provided through external packages. In many cases, that may be true. In other cases, it really makes sense to allow for a more flexible space of user code available to the community. The TeX ecosystem may have some issues with maintaining packages and especially with interoperability, but it provides an unbelievable wealth of high-quality additions to the core software that could never be provided otherwise. Due to the relative lack of adoption and the small size of the community LilyPond can’t seem to take some threshold toward creating a similarly stable ecosystem (so far?). The "TeX ecosystem" consists of plain TeX with fudge-ons (comparable to LilyPond and LSR snippets), of the monolithic Context (driven by a not-much-more-than-one-man company), and of the modular LaTeX. The only system that has exploded in number and functionality of extensions and styles is LaTeX. That suggests that the development potential is not as much dependent on the underlying technology but of readily available interfaces for integrating both functionality as well as document styles into a fixed framework. I am not sure I would say that. Even though LaTeX is already more workable than plain TeX, it quickly gets pretty limited in features on its own, and programming it is very much not fun at all if not atrocious. So you need packages to accomplish about any standard task. The very quality of core LilyPond may be the reason why packaging layers around it have failed to really take off and LSR remains far more commonly used than openLilyLib. Not to mention that many amazing LilyPond snippets are expressed in less than 50 lines of Scheme code, which is just as convenient to inline in your file than to include. I don't think the same holds with TeX. We need to reflect on what packaging systems bring to other projects and what in that is or is not relevant to the LilyPond community. In other words, we should create a packaging system that fits a purpose. I don't believe that a packaging layer will enable us to steal some of LaTeX's success by its only existence. Another aspect is that TeX is frozen, and working with it is working with a prehistoric and pitiful piece of software by today's standards. But it's impossible to change due to backwards compatibility (I think), so you get more and more new competitors, each with its own incompatibilities: XeTeX, LuaTeX, ConTeXt. Having most features baked into LilyPond's core means we can make it evolve rather fast compared to the size of the project. convert-ly also helps there. Jean
Re: openlilylib pull request
Am 09.05.22 um 01:59 schrieb David Kastrup: The "TeX ecosystem" consists of plain TeX with fudge-ons (comparable to LilyPond and LSR snippets), of the monolithic Context (driven by a not-much-more-than-one-man company), and of the modular LaTeX. The only system that has exploded in number and functionality of extensions and styles is LaTeX. This might get off topic quickly, but I don’t want to let that uncommented WRT ConTeXt: ConTeXt is driven by a small community, even if Hans Hagen still does most of the programming (in communication with experts, e.g. for math or “exotic” languages). His company doesn’t play a big role and could hardly ever use ConTeXt for commercial projects (not because you couldn’t use ConTeXt for commercial projects, I do, but because the projects they got paid for didn’t involve producing PDFs). ConTeXt is monolithic insofar as it usually doesn’t need some settings as a package, because you just setup the settings yourself, and the interface is quite consistent. There *is* a growing number of modules, though. Many are part of the distribution, others are “third party”; if they gain wider acceptance, they often get integrated into the distribution, like the bibliography module. It’s common for ConTeXt users to just install all available modules – but LaTeX users also often just install the whole TeX live distribution. That suggests that the development potential is not as much dependent on the underlying technology but of readily available interfaces for integrating both functionality as well as document styles into a fixed framework. I guess development of open source projects depends the most on people who do it against all odds (like you). Of course it helps if they do it in a way that others can chime in. And then we need people who help building the community, answer questions etc. Hraban
Openlilylib
Hello All, I've been absent from the list for a long time, but recently got CC'd about an Openlilylib pull request. I must apologise for never getting around to updating the list on the Openlilylib project status. Some time ago I took over from Urs who is no longer able to do the work for private reasons I am not at liberty to share. All started well and I setup a Linux server and a Wordpress site and forum for the project. Taking over the code repository it had long needed a large amount of refactoring, which I started but this proved to be a complicated project for reasons I need not detain people with here. Then due to what can only be described as sheer stupidity I managed to irrecoverably destroy my Linux server (it's a long story). What happened after that is twofold. First, I am sorry to say that I was diagnosed with the quite rare blood cancer Multiple Myeloma some ten years ago now. It's fatal and incurable, though it can be managed well, especially by the hospital here in Melbourne, Australia which has a world leading research department specializing, amazingly, in the particular cancer. So although I am doing well sometimes large software tasks become very onerous and difficult, compared to before I became ill. Second, with the difficulties mentioned, it seemed to me that I only ever got less than half a dozen people signed up on the Discourse forum, and the project seemed hardly worth the effort to continue, even though I do know there are quite a few OLL end users. The sum of all this is that I have left it dormant for such a long time. So at present there is no repository owner to accept pull requests, I am not really able to restart this project, and very happy for others to pick up the ball. People are welcome to contact me for any advice. Once again, apologies for being incommunicado, and all the best to everyone. Andrew Bernard
