Add announcements to the upper right corner of the website

Add announcements to the upper right corner of the website

[MikeSol, 2012-04-19 13:51:54]

Hey all,

My ensemble is launching a Kickstarter project in a day or two to support our
tour in France and Ireland.

We have a sweet plug in the project video for GNU LilyPond and I was wondering
if I could strike up a partnership with LilyPond to put a link to the project on
the LilyPond front page for the duration of the Kickstarter fundraising drive
(30 days).  In return, I'd be glad to fix a couple bounty items (my lack of
development time in recent months has come from the fact that I've been spending
all my time on composing and fundraising).

This patch is more or less what I'd need.  I can change the layout based on
whatever people think is best.  Currently, the spot for the ensemble is towards
the top of the page and the downloads are horizontally aligned with the news.

This partnership would be a huge boost for my ensemble and I don't think it'd
divert any € that'd otherwise be going to LilyPond.  I'll certainly do my best
to make sure that the tour promotes the software.

Cheers,
MS

[dak, 2012-04-19 14:40:31]

mtsolo@gmail.com writes:

> Reviewers: ,
>
> Message:
> Hey all,
>
> My ensemble is launching a Kickstarter project in a day or two to
> support our tour in France and Ireland.
>
> We have a sweet plug in the project video for GNU LilyPond and I was
> wondering if I could strike up a partnership with LilyPond to put a link
> to the project on the LilyPond front page for the duration of the
> Kickstarter fundraising drive (30 days).

I probably should be the last person to complain, but I would consider
that inappropriate.  The benefit for LilyPond is rather indirect:
basically every publisher or composer or user using LilyPond would have
similar grounds for comparable wishes, and we would have our front page
drowned in ads if we were to heed them.

What I would suggest is that you write up a short article about your
tour and your use of LilyPond, mention the Kickstarter campaign, and
publish the article in the next LilyPond Report.  You can then flaunt
that issue of the LilyPond Report to whatever music and/or computer news
sites you wish, and thus get a combined tour/LilyPond exposure to the
degree you find yourself willing on working on distribution.  I think it
should be possible to time the next issue in a manner where it
reasonably agrees with your tour dates.

-- 
David Kastrup

[mike_apollinemike.com, 2012-04-19 15:52:25]

On Apr 19, 2012, at 4:40 PM, David Kastrup wrote:

> mtsolo@gmail.com writes:
> 
>> Reviewers: ,
>> 
>> Message:
>> Hey all,
>> 
>> My ensemble is launching a Kickstarter project in a day or two to
>> support our tour in France and Ireland.
>> 
>> We have a sweet plug in the project video for GNU LilyPond and I was
>> wondering if I could strike up a partnership with LilyPond to put a link
>> to the project on the LilyPond front page for the duration of the
>> Kickstarter fundraising drive (30 days).
> 
> I probably should be the last person to complain, but I would consider
> that inappropriate.
> The benefit for LilyPond is rather indirect:

There are three benefits:

1)  Imagine it like part of the bounty program.  I don't cash in on bounties
because I devote all my time to my career in the arts, but this career in the
arts needs to succeed in order for me to devote the time I do.  Part of this
success is linked to donations, and the LilyPond site is an avenue that can lead
to the getting of those donations.
2)  Everywhere we go we propose talks and workshops on score making.  So while
LilyPond itself doesn't gain a benefit as in (1) above, people know more about
it, which can't hurt.
3)  In the video we're using (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsC6asiyEew)
there's a big fat I <3 LilyPond.  This is bound to be seen by 500-1000 people
who know nothing about LilyPond.

> basically every publisher or composer or user using LilyPond would have
> similar grounds for comparable wishes, and we would have our front page
> drowned in ads if we were to heed them.
> 

With respect to the three points above:

1)  The ads should not be paying and should be a community decision by the
developers to support a worthy cause that somehow feeds back into LilyPond.  If
there's a developer or user whose LilyPond related project can benefit from the
work they put into LilyPond, I for one would be happy to spread the word about
it.
2)  The project being promoted should link back into LilyPond somehow - not just
"I use LilyPond" but "I use and I promote LilyPond."
3)  We'd want said person to link back into LilyPond for the ad to be worthwhile
running via their site or their ad, which is what my video does.

I don't think we should go over 1 ad at a time, so there's no drowning.  It's
purely a question of choice.  For example, Janek is currently applying to GSoC
and there is another candidate who applied for LilyPond stuff as well.  Either
of them would stand to gain $5000ish from participating, which is huge.  Only
one of them will get chosen, and the LilyPond community has had no problem
sorting out internally which project is most worthwhile.

People can propose patches if they want the real-estate on the site which will
be pushed or not depending on what people think.  It is a great way for LilyPond
to help those who help LilyPond and to benefit from the deal as well.

> What I would suggest is that you write up a short article about your
> tour and your use of LilyPond, mention the Kickstarter campaign, and
> publish the article in the next LilyPond Report.  You can then flaunt
> that issue of the LilyPond Report to whatever music and/or computer news
> sites you wish, and thus get a combined tour/LilyPond exposure to the
> degree you find yourself willing on working on distribution.  I think it
> should be possible to time the next issue in a manner where it
> reasonably agrees with your tour dates.
> 

I am going to be sending hundreds of e-mails around flaunting the kickstarter
site.  The few forums where I won't be able to spread the word about Kickstarter
and would need to talk about it obliquely via the LilyPond report won't get much
traffic.  I know that the LilyPond report is read (I read every issue!), but I
doubt this'd have 1/100th of the effect that something on the main website would
have.

I remember that one of the reasons I didn't download LilyPond early on was
because I didn't associate it with living music projects.  I think that the
rubric on the website w/ LilyPond projects is great, but I think it'd be even
better to feature them on the front page.  Like these sites:

http://www.python.org/ (right corner)
http://www.blender.org/ (the mango project, also on the right)
http://www.appcelerator.com/ (the bottom of the page)

These things pull me into the site - they certainly don't push me away.

Of course, one can cite many differences between all of these projects and
LilyPond.  But I don't think these differences are prohibitive or impinge upon
my logic.    I think that this can set up a great precedent: if throwing
something like this up on the LilyPond site winds up paying off for my ensemble
AND sending new people to the lilypond site AND sending the message to people
who want this real-estate "hey, if you want to get your project promoted, you
better be promoting us and while your at it how bout some beam quanting code?",
this seems like a win win win.  Obviously I'm biased, but I think the benefits
can be huge from this sorta thing for all parties involved (which is, at the end
of the day, what economics is at its best, and free software IS an economy).

Cheers,
MS

[Graham Percival, 2012-04-19 17:10:46]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 04:40:08PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
> mtsolo@gmail.com writes:
> 
> > We have a sweet plug in the project video for GNU LilyPond and I was
> > wondering if I could strike up a partnership with LilyPond to put a link
> > to the project on the LilyPond front page for the duration of the
> > Kickstarter fundraising drive (30 days).

No.

> I probably should be the last person to complain, but I would consider
> that inappropriate.

I don't think you should be the last person to complain -- after
careful discussion and negotiation, we settled on having a
"sponsoring" page under community.  A proposal to have a personal,
non-lilypond-specific, advertizement on the main website page goes
far beyond that.  In some ways I think you should be the *first*
person to complain!

> What I would suggest is that you write up a short article about your
> tour and your use of LilyPond, mention the Kickstarter campaign, and
> publish the article in the next LilyPond Report.

+1
that's what we made David do.

You have the added advantage that if Valentin is dragging his
heels on the report, you can track him down and physically force
him to release it.  You're bigger than him.  :)

- Graham

[mike_apollinemike.com, 2012-04-19 22:25:17]

On Apr 19, 2012, at 7:10 PM, Graham Percival wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 04:40:08PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
>> mtsolo@gmail.com writes:
>> 
>>> We have a sweet plug in the project video for GNU LilyPond and I was
>>> wondering if I could strike up a partnership with LilyPond to put a link
>>> to the project on the LilyPond front page for the duration of the
>>> Kickstarter fundraising drive (30 days).
> 
> No.

Fair 'nuf!  I definitely don't want this to be an issue, so I rescind my
request.

However, now that it is rescinded and I have no direct interest anymore, I still
stand by what I said and really think people should not shy away from the logic
I'm putting forward.

The real-estate value of the upper right corner of lilypond.org is huge. 
Currently it is unexploited property, just sitting there.  If there are people
who can offer LilyPond-friendly exchanges for it that fulfill the criteria of
(1) bringing value to LilyPond; and (2) not compromising the integrity of the
page or of LilyPond's status as free software, then I think it is absolutely
essential that LilyPond cultivate its real estate to this end.  Otherwise, it is
wasted potential.

Cheers,
MS

[dak, 2012-04-20 08:57:05]

On 2012/04/19 22:25:17, mike_apollinemike.com wrote:

> The real-estate value of the upper right corner of http://lilypond.org is
huge. 
> Currently it is unexploited property, just sitting there.  If there are people
> who can offer LilyPond-friendly exchanges for it that fulfill the criteria of
> (1) bringing value to LilyPond; and (2) not compromising the integrity of the
> page or of LilyPond's status as free software, then I think it is absolutely
> essential that LilyPond cultivate its real estate to this end.  Otherwise, it
is
> wasted potential.

"Wasted potential" is another name for "we don't want to go there".  If you take
a look at, say, <URL:http://www.ardour.org>, you have an integrated frontpage
advertisement for proprietary software tying into Ardour.  The main programmer
of Ardour (which in itself is free software) receives a percentage of sales of
the advertised proprietary software.

Now for better or worse, LilyPond is not a "Mike" project, or a "Graham"
project, or a "David" project.  It is a GNU project.  We don't have an "official
money sink" for LilyPond.  We do have a page pointing out how to contribute or
donate to LilyPond development.  Its discoverability is debatable.  I point out
there what kind of work can be sponsored by paying me for it.  I would certainly
not object (and it would certainly be ridiculous if I did) if you pointed out
your availability to work on the engraving backend for pay.

It is actually something where I don't contribute significantly: my own focus is
not as much on increasing the amounts of things one can achieve with LilyPond,
but rather how much one can achieve without being clever.

But "visit our concerts, pay entrance, keep the ensemble alive and I'll probably
contribute more" is not actually appropriate there, either.  It is not an offer,
but a speculation and a story.  That's fine for publishing in a lot of places,
including the LilyPond Report, and I encourage you doing so.  It is certainly
more newsworthy than "LilyPond programmer for hire", and you should milk that
for what it is worth.

But the LilyPond _project_ pages are not the right milking machine here in my
opinion.  Of course, we have pages where we point out compositions and other
uses of LilyPond (I remember some recent additions in that area): I don't think
that you could be refused equal coverage there.

[Graham Percival, 2012-04-25 11:25:02]

First, editing embedded javascript is not a general solution.

Second, I'm not at all certain we want to have commercial announcements in that
area.  I'm sorry if I gave the impression that this was to be a green light for
any kind of announcement.

[mike7, 2012-04-25 11:28:59]

On 2012/04/25 11:25:02, Graham Percival wrote:
> First, editing embedded javascript is not a general solution.
> 
> Second, I'm not at all certain we want to have commercial announcements in
that
> area.  I'm sorry if I gave the impression that this was to be a green light
for
> any kind of announcement.

Why wouldn't this be a general solution?  I think that anyone who wants to add
an announcement would have to:

a) Add an entry to the array.
b) Build the website and make sure that their entry fits.

Also, in the most recent patchset I've changed my text to get rid of the
kickstarter bit.  I'll change the issue names as well.

[Graham Percival, 2012-04-26 06:07:14]

I like the content of the announcement.

I still don't like the idea of manually editing index.html.  I was
expecting/hoping for something like

Documentation/web/twits.txt:
-----
The Ensemble 101 is going on a European tour where they'll sing
music typeset using LilyPond.  Click <a target=\"_blank\"
\href=\"http://www.ensemble101.fr\">here</a> to learn more!
-----
The Birmingham Amateur Theatre is presenting "Penzance Pirates",
starring our documentation editor Trevor Daniels as the talking lion![1]
-----
Project manager Graham Percival has successfully defended his PhD
thesis.  Only two days of edits left to go before he hands in the
final version![2]
-----
Valentin is trying soy milk with his cereal.  Still on the fence
about it.[3]
-----

and then the javascript would parse that file.  I'm not picky
about the file format (it could be "each line is a separate
announcement; lines can be up to 256 chars long" since that's
probably easier to handle in javascript).

[1] this is (probably) not true.
[3] this is (definitely) not true.
[2] joke blantly stolen from Canadian politics.  Also, probably
not true.

- Graham


On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 11:28:59AM +0000, mike@mikesolomon.org wrote:
> Why wouldn't this be a general solution?  I think that anyone who wants
> to add an announcement would have to:
> 
> a) Add an entry to the array.
> b) Build the website and make sure that their entry fits.
> 
> Also, in the most recent patchset I've changed my text to get rid of the
> kickstarter bit.  I'll change the issue names as well.
> 
> http://codereview.appspot.com/6068045/

[mike7, 2012-04-27 07:48:00]

Hey all,

The new patchset puts the tweets in a separate xml file.  I use xml instead of
txt to avoid parsing annoyances.  The only problem is that, because the xml is
in a DOM structure, the individual tweets can't contain sub-nodes, which means
that if someone wants to use anchor tags or whatever, they need to use < and
&gt; instead of < and >.

[mike7, 2012-04-27 07:49:30]

I also just realized that git-cl does not know how to play nicely with the .xml
extension, so the patch can't be tested.  I'll investigate...

[mike7, 2012-04-27 07:52:02]

Hmm...it looks like the xml mime type is defined, so I'm short on ideas for why
it's not uploading to Rietveld correctly.
Below are the contents of tweets.xml:


<tweets>
<tweet>
The Ensemble 101 is going on a European tour where they'll sing music
typeset using LilyPond.  Click &lt;a target="_blank"
href="http://www.ensemble101.fr"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; to learn more!
</tweet>
</tweets>

[Graham Percival, 2012-04-27 07:53:06]

On 2012/04/27 07:49:30, mike7 wrote:
> I also just realized that git-cl does not know how to play nicely with the
.xml
> extension, so the patch can't be tested.  I'll investigate...

Have you tried adding it to line 26 of git-cl ?

[Graham Percival, 2012-04-27 07:55:54]

LGTM, one minor question but it's ok with me.

http://codereview.appspot.com/6068045/diff/13001/Documentation/web.texi
File Documentation/web.texi (right):

http://codereview.appspot.com/6068045/diff/13001/Documentation/web.texi#newco...
Documentation/web.texi:172: xhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
My initial intuition is that there should be a simpler way to get the contents
of a file on the same server, but I happily know almost nothing about
javascript.

If somebody else knows javascript, it would be great if they glanced at this.

[mike7, 2012-04-27 07:58:50]

On 2012/04/27 07:53:06, Graham Percival wrote:
> On 2012/04/27 07:49:30, mike7 wrote:
> > I also just realized that git-cl does not know how to play nicely with the
> .xml
> > extension, so the patch can't be tested.  I'll investigate...
> 
> Have you tried adding it to line 26 of git-cl ?

I added:

mimetypes.add_type("application/xml", ".xml")

But to no avail :(

[mike7, 2012-04-27 07:59:38]

On 2012/04/27 07:55:54, Graham Percival wrote:
> LGTM, one minor question but it's ok with me.
> 
> http://codereview.appspot.com/6068045/diff/13001/Documentation/web.texi
> File Documentation/web.texi (right):
> 
>
http://codereview.appspot.com/6068045/diff/13001/Documentation/web.texi#newco...
> Documentation/web.texi:172: xhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
> My initial intuition is that there should be a simpler way to get the contents
> of a file on the same server, but I happily know almost nothing about
> javascript.
> 
> If somebody else knows javascript, it would be great if they glanced at this.

Check out http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_parser.asp.

[Graham Percival, 2012-04-27 07:59:58]

On 2012/04/27 07:58:50, mike7 wrote:
> > Have you tried adding it to line 26 of git-cl ?
> mimetypes.add_type("application/xml", ".xml")
> 
> But to no avail :(

ok, fair enough.  It's a small, new, file, and can see the entire thing by
following the "download" link next to the filename in rietveld.

[hanwenn, 2012-04-27 12:19:55]

Totally off the wall idea here:

Is it possilble to display the contents of the twitter #lilypond
hashtag and/or @lilypond twitter account in an iframe instead? If we
use actual twitter, we would get some publicity on twitter.com too.

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 4:52 AM,  <mike@mikesolomon.org> wrote:
> Hmm...it looks like the xml mime type is defined, so I'm short on ideas
> for why it's not uploading to Rietveld correctly.
> Below are the contents of tweets.xml:
>
>
> <tweets>
> <tweet>
> The Ensemble 101 is going on a European tour where they'll sing music
> typeset using LilyPond.  Click &lt;a target="_blank"
> href="http://www.ensemble101.fr"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; to learn more!
> </tweet>
> </tweets>
>
>
>
> http://codereview.appspot.com/6068045/
>
> _______________________________________________
> lilypond-devel mailing list
> lilypond-devel@gnu.org
> https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-devel



-- 
Han-Wen Nienhuys - hanwen@xs4all.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen

[Graham Percival, 2012-04-27 12:39:49]

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 09:19:55AM -0300, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> Is it possilble to display the contents of the twitter #lilypond
> hashtag and/or @lilypond twitter account in an iframe instead? If we
> use actual twitter, we would get some publicity on twitter.com too.

It's certainly possible, but nobody's shown much interest in
working on announcement methods:
http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=940
I mean, even plain old RSS isn't working.

I view this "twits.txt" as a possible first step towards such
announcements.

- Graham

[hanwenn, 2012-04-27 13:15:33]

Who is GNU_LilyPond anyway?  I thought it was, but I might be mistaken.

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 9:39 AM, Graham Percival
<graham@percival-music.ca> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 09:19:55AM -0300, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
>> Is it possilble to display the contents of the twitter #lilypond
>> hashtag and/or @lilypond twitter account in an iframe instead? If we
>> use actual twitter, we would get some publicity on twitter.com too.
>
> It's certainly possible, but nobody's shown much interest in
> working on announcement methods:
> http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=940
> I mean, even plain old RSS isn't working.
>
> I view this "twits.txt" as a possible first step towards such
> announcements.
>
> - Graham



-- 
Han-Wen Nienhuys - hanwen@xs4all.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen

[hanwenn, 2012-04-27 13:18:24]

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 10:15 AM, Han-Wen Nienhuys <hanwenn@gmail.com> wrote:
> Who is GNU_LilyPond anyway?  I thought it was, but I might be mistaken.

I mean: I thought it was Jan.

-- 
Han-Wen Nienhuys - hanwen@xs4all.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen

[Graham Percival, 2012-04-27 13:24:35]

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 10:18:23AM -0300, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 10:15 AM, Han-Wen Nienhuys <hanwenn@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Who is GNU_LilyPond anyway?  I thought it was, but I might be mistaken.
> 
> I mean: I thought it was Jan.

yeah, it's Jan.

- Graham

[janneke_gnu.org, 2012-05-01 20:30:55]

Graham Percival writes:

> On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 10:18:23AM -0300, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 10:15 AM, Han-Wen Nienhuys <hanwenn@gmail.com>
wrote:
>> > Who is GNU_LilyPond anyway?  I thought it was, but I might be mistaken.
>> 
>> I mean: I thought it was Jan.
>
> yeah, it's Jan.

yes, /currently/ it's me, but as you can see, it could do with some love

Jan

-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org> | GNU LilyPond http://lilypond.org
Freelance IT http://JoyofSource.com | Avatar®  http://AvatarAcademy.nl