From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Strategy document?
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Friday, October 10, 2008, 12:59 AM
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 10:07 PM, Nikola Smolenski
<smolensk(a)eunet.yu> wrote:
On Friday 10 October 2008 01:07:28 Gregory
Maxwell
wrote:
> How do you draw slurs in abc? (Trick
question...)
Saying abc is a
> replacement for lilypond is like saying that
plain
text is a
> replacement for LaTeX math, strictly correct
but
with significant
> compromises.
>
> The right thing to do is to offer a limited subset
of the language
just as
we don't allow SVG+js.
However, for years, no one is able to offer that
limited subset.
I don't know that anyone has bothered trying, or at
least I know that
I haven't. I had been under the impression that the
blocker was the
general architecture of the WikiTeX stuff which had nothing
to do with
lilypond. The scheme stuff should be relatively straight
forward to
disallow.
Are you saying that you now plan to bother trying?
I am sure that there are tons of cool things that can be done with different kinds of
software if only developers would volunteer the time to work on the issues. Nikola is
volunteering to work on abc and other developers seem to respond with "but Lilypond
is cooler" All I know is Wikisource has been getting requests for music for years.
After my prodding, I had been told that it is up to Lilypond to fix their issues before
WMF will consider enabling the software. None of our devs seem willing to make Lilypond
work. The bug has been open for 4 years. If we have someone volunteering to get abc
working for Wikisource, what is the issue? Whatever the defects, it is a great
improvement over page scans.
Birgitte SB