[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> I know far less of Lilypond typesetting than Mats. Yet I allow myself to
> follow up his thread. It has been my experience during the typesetting
> of the few scores I've actually produced that the task already with the
> 1.2.x releases of Lilypond strongly resembles that of computer scripting
> or programming especially in comparison with the MusiXTeX utilities
> which I use frequently.
>
> I'm perfectly aware of the complicated nature of a _music_ producing
> tool (lilypond) where typesetting is only one among other types of
> output. But I also think it is important to the designers of Lilypond to
> consider the needs of it's users. Of course I can only speak for myself
> when I express the wish that in my role as a lilypond user I may keep
> the music perspective in foreground while the programming perspective
> shouldn't be stressed more than absolutely necessary. I agree with Mats
> that else many potential lilypond users would give up caused by the
> Lilypond scripting complexities.
Of course I (and Jan) think about `ordinary users'. Otherwise we
would never have bothered to start Lilypond (or its predecessor MPP)
in the first place. We're doing this GUILE thing for users: it makes
Lilypond features easier to use. We can have more features that are
more easily accessible.
For example, I recently implemented one of your requested features:
changing the order of clef, key signature and barlines. Now that we
have GUILE, it is easy to pass compound data structures to the
typesetting engine:
\propery Score.breakAlignOrder = #'("Key_item" "Clef_item"
"Staff_bar")
Without GUILE this kind of functionality would be impossible to have:
it would be complicated and bug-prone to implement, and it would be
very complicated to use.
--
Han-Wen Nienhuys, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ** GNU LilyPond - The Music Typesetter
http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/hanwen/lilypond/index.html
