My first slackware package

Originally Posted by hazel What I did (which is definitely not the way to do it!) was to start with an existing slackbuild and edit its various parts to suit the pmw program. So you could say I was using a template, only not an official one. Then Skaendo took it in hand and edited it into the final proper form.

I can't anything wrong with that, the results should be the same.
I done that my self.

Originally Posted by hazel What I did (which is definitely not the way to do it!) was to start with an existing slackbuild and edit its various parts to suit the pmw program.

I did the same thing too once upon a time. Then I started finding tools like mkslack which I use all the time now.

But I think that it is probably good to use an existing one and edit it to what you need because it shows you what is going on at least a little on the inside and you learn from it.

Nice job Hazel, you made it in to the prestigious club, SBo! Welcome!

Congratulations from me, too, on your first Slackbuild. I have some minor (hopefully constructive) criticism, though, regarding the README file:

... Because it uses postscript, pmw requires ghostscript to be installed on your system. ...

On a default Slackware installation ghostscript is already installed. The above sentence might be misinterpreted as an additional dependency that needs to be satisfied prior to installation. Since this is not necessary an inexperienced user might be inclined to search for a ghostscript slackbuild, which he will not find, of course. So that sentence has some minor potential to be a source of confusion. Therefore, I suggest to remove that sentence.

Wow! Nobody told me it was up. My first attempt failed because something weird had happened to the source download link in pmw.info. This was the second attempt.

@crts. How do I change the README? I couldn't find anything in the FAQ about altering a slackbuild. Do I just resubmit the whole thing? But then it would be a duplicate, wouldn't it.

Originally Posted by hazel Wow! Nobody told me it was up. My first attempt failed because something weird had happened to the source download link in pmw.info. This was the second attempt. @crts. How do I change the README? I couldn't find anything in the FAQ.

Edit, re-compress, and re-submit.
Just note on the submission page what you fixed.

Originally Posted by hazel Wow! Nobody told me it was up. My first attempt failed because something weird had happened to the source download link in pmw.info. This was the second attempt. @crts. How do I change the README? I couldn't find anything in the FAQ.

Well, you change your own private version and then you have to submit again. Submissions usually get accepted around the weekend (Friday/Saturday), at least according to my observations so far.

Edit:
Skaendo was faster.

Done. Now I have another idea. Since I had to create a Sourceforge site to host pmw, I am going to add my own pmwScribe program to that site. After all, the two programs are closely related. pmwScribe provides a quick-and-dirty graphical interface to pmw for people (like me!) who don't do a lot of music writing and therefore frequently forget the details of the pmw language. You pin notes and rests onto a visible stave and the pmw text file gets written in the background. Then you can run it through pmw, look at the result in a postscript viewer and carry out whatever edits are necessary. When I need to write music nowadays, that's how I do it.

There was a bug in the program that caused it to think sometimes it was in "chord" mode when it wasn't. Chords are represented in pmw language by groups of notes enclosed in parentheses, and my program would put those in apparently randomly. I just edited them out again but obviously you wouldn't want to publish a program in that state! Then a couple of days ago I suddenly remembered that the unwanted parentheses always came around barlines. So I checked the code for drawing a barline on the stave and found out what was causing the problem. So now I feel I can publish.

Incidentally, I sent Philip Hazel a copy of my program (that was a year or so ago) and he seemed to like it, so I feel I have his imprimatur.

Side notes:

I never heard about Philip Hazel before your package pmw. After doing a little research I find out that he is the original developer of Exim and pcre. The last note that I seen about him was that in 2017 he was still at least in part maintaining pcre2. Pretty neat.

Originally Posted by hazel Incidentally, I sent Philip Hazel a copy of my program (that was a year or so ago) and he seemed to like it, so I feel I have his imprimatur.

Or at least his nihil obstat

Originally Posted by hazel Since I had to create a Sourceforge site to host pmw, I am going to add my own pmwScribe program to that site.

Is there a reason why you want to host on Sourceforge instead of something git related, e.g., notabug.org?

Well, I have the web page already, don't I? Why not make use of it? And I don't want to have to go through the whole process of registering somewhere else. I really do hate these big sites, and besides, every time you register somewhere, you have to have a new password. I'm 74 remember, much too old to cope with all those complications.