Hi all, a very important discussion! A couple thoughts:
2013/12/1 Carl Peterson <carlopeter...@gmail.com>: > LP came out in the midst of other packages that already existed. As a > result, it is fighting for marketshare in a relatively mature market. > Granted, it is possible to overcome this hurdle, as Google Chrome seems to > be doing in the Browser Wars, but it takes something special for that to > happen. In the case of Firefox and Chrome, that something was IE's truly > abysmal performance in the IE 6-8 years. That's true. What's more, web browser users are just consumers. With notation packages, they are creators: - learning how to create takes days or weeks (while learning how to consume takes minutes), - creators have a lot of their content tied to a specific format. 2013/12/1 Kieren MacMillan <kieren_macmil...@sympatico.ca>: > Urs wrote: >> Most people I tried to persuade simply said "this isn't my cup of tea, >> I'm not a programmer”. > > THAT is the main problem right there — one we are likely never to overcome, > as much as I hate to admit it. Yup... As i see it, 90% of people notating music will never want to use LilyPond, and we cannot do much about it: - they don't care about high quality (just want "good enough"), - they want to do things the easiest way, and LilyPond will never appear to be the easiest choice, - etc. Unfortunately, people who don't have money for Finale/Sibelius usually pirate it (instead of using Free Software). Also, some smaller publishers i've talked with seem not to care much about quality engraving, and big publishers have a lot of inertia and stick to tried programs. Still, something like 10% of people *could* be convinced to using LilyPond. Some of them (2-3% of notation software users?) would actually prefer using Lily for some reason. Let's not waste time trying to convince the ones who cannot be convinced, and instead try finding people who may actually like LilyPond, but don't know that they could use it: - people with no money AND strong etthics, who won't pirate software (e.g. monks/other religious people that typeset religious music), - public companies with little money, which cannot risk using pirated software, - people who want to Do Things The Right Way (usually geeks) - these usually won't be scared by text input at all, - professional engravers that really want perfect results, - other professionals who would benefit from very advanced workflows (using version control). This is what Urs was talking about and i really think it would be a very good opportunity for LilyPond. - people who still use Score - they do care about quality, they shouldn't be scared by learning curve, - organizations funded by governments (0 price should be a big advantage to them, and gonvernments should be promoting open culture anyway), - people who don't use any notation yet - students. 2013/12/1 David Kastrup <d...@gnu.org>: > >> Here are the problems I run into: (1) most musicians/composers/institutions >> are already using something. > > So we need to catch them before they do. Janek got a number of his > choir colleagues to enter "Stabat Mater" (don't remember whose, > Pergolesi?) into LilyPond. It was Handel's Dixit Dominus (http://lilypondblog.org/2013/06/crowd-engraving-whats-that-part-1/) - very simple notation-wise. But later we entered more complex pieces as well. Still, most of them were "geeky" people (physics PhD, a couple programmers, math students). The approach i used there (i mean "crowd-engraving") proved to be a good one, but we'd have to make a lot things simpler to make this really effective. I mean, i was the only one who could combine the parts into the full score - creating \score blocks (real-life \score blocks, with all nuances and settings) is too difficult for beginners. So, what should we do now? I suggest to create some comparisons and promotional materials, similar to what is already in our Essay, but more diverse and in a more compact form. I already have some stuff like that which i could share and translate. Who'd like to join this effort? Also, the currently published series of articles on the lilypondblog.org aims to make a foundation for this effort (evangelize about LilyPond). best, Janek _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
