Re: openlilylib pull request

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

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