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LilyPond Mailing Lists How To

When you send a message to one of the LilyPond mailing lists, you will often
get a quick reply, thanks to involved and experienced users and developers.
Here is some useful advice that will help this situation go on and avoid that
these people have to repeat the same things or ask you details you should have
already specified.

Do not be intimidated by this big list of rules! We will not bite you if you occasionnally offend
one of them, but keep in mind other mailing lists like the Linux Kernel mailing list
have very strict policies.

Of course, depending of the type of your message, only a part of these rules may
be applicable.
The section "Support" in lilypond.org FAQ already gives important advice.

The LilyPond Mailing Lists where you can send messages to

Click the "info" links for list info, suscribing or browsing the archives.

• lilypond-user@gnu.org (info): discussion about installing and using LilyPond.

This is also the place where to send remarks on the software or the website, and your contributions (code snippets, tricks, LilyPond-related software announcements...).

• lilypond-devel@gnu.org (info): discussion about LilyPond development.
• bug-lilypond@gnu.org (info): send your bug reports there.

Before you send a message: check if your problem, question or comment...

... has not already an answer in the documentation

It appears that browsing the documentation on computer screen is more convenient
with the HTML pages than with the PDF, because the PDF is mainly to be printed:
there are no hypertext links, so it is possible that you scroll the pages
without finding what you want.

Remember that the full table of contents (at the end of the top page) and the index
can help you, as well as your browser's text search feature. If relevant, have also
a look at the tips and tricks, the program reference or the installation instructions.

... was not discussed earlier on the mailing lists

Searching the mailing lists may be really very instructive...
Browse or search lilypond-user archive, bug-lilypond archive, lilypond-devel archive.
You can search via the lilypond.org search page too.

Writing your message

If you have found a bug or something that doesn't work, or if you have installation problems...

Please always specify:

1. Which LilyPond version you use/install
2. What your platform is: architecture (x86, PPC, ...) and Operating System (Windows, MacOS, Linux, BSD, ...)
3. Where you got the LilyPond binaries: on lilypond.org, compiled from source, packaged in your distribution...

Try to describe the problem with details; if useful, include:

• a code snippet. Be aware that in most cases, a bug can be raised by a few (i.e., less than ten) lines of code.

Anyway, always follow the tips given in LilyPond documentation, in section Troubleshooting (taking it all apart)
before sending a long .ly file to the list.

• a small picture of the output: run lilypond --png your_file.ly and crop the png output to keep

the interesting part.

• a terminal output, or (on MS-Windows) the content of the log file.

NOTE: if you post from Gmane (see below Lists are moderated), and if you
include LilyPond code which contain > or >> , add a line beginning with >
on top of your message, like this (found in a message from Sietse Brouwer ;-)

> This line is to prevent Gmane from suspecting me of top-posting. Heh.

Otherwise, your post would be rejected by Gmane (see why below, in "Inline replies are preferred").

Subject

Write carefully the subject, so that people who know something related to
your question or problem will pay more attention to your message.
If you have questions, comments or problems on very different topics,
please write one message per topic, to get more consistent and easy-to read threads.

Attachments

The total size of emails to the mailing lists cannot exceed 64 KB.
If you must send a big file, put it somewhere on the Web or, only if someone on the list
asks you, send him it privately. Remember this Wiki is not a storage space, so
big uploaded files will not stay here for a long time.
By the way, do not use HTML email if it is not necessary: disk space and bandwidth are still
precious in the age of broadband and hundreds gigabytes hard disks.

Lists are moderated

If you are not suscribed to the mailing lists, each message you directly send to
the list email adress will be rejected; please use Gmane interfaces
for lilypond-user, lilypond-devel, bug-lilypond.
There are, at least, two reasons for suscribing to the mailing lists:

• Your messages get much faster to the list, as you simply have to send an email.
• As you get more experienced with LilyPond, you can help other users by

solving their problems.

Replying to a message

"Keep traffic on the mailing list!"

When replying to a message, always choose the "Reply to all" option of your email client,
to make sure everybody (the list members, and the message sender, whether (s)he is suscribed or not)
will get your reply. You maybe do not suspect that, but your reply may be interesting for all LilyPonders,
except if it is really off-topic, private discussion or a troll.

"Inline replies are preferred"

They save everyone a lot of time. Please configure your email client accordingly
(it has certainly an option "Reply style: quote original message") and write each
reply for a part of the message after it, like in a dialogue.
You can find more about inline replies (concrete examples, why this is important, ...) on
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/how_to_write_effective_mailing_list_email.

Digests

If you get the lists traffic in digests, please correct the Subject line
before sending your reply.

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