>... I've been using the online manual and tutorial, > as well as mutopia to 'learn by example'.
As you say, many of the Mutopia examples are written for fairly old Lilypond versions. You can update some of the features using the program convert-ly, but if you want a better set of examples to learn from, take a look at the files in the directories input/test/ and input/regression/ included both in the source code tree and somewhere in the precompiled packages. You can actually view many of them in the document "Regression test" on the web site. > There is a lot of theory > behind this that I'm not familiar with - won't be until I get Linux up > again, stuff like moving grobs manually to avoid collisions the system > gave up on (probably my fault). Well, it's got nothing to do with Linux or Windows. If you send a short example to the mailing list illustrating the problem, I'm sure someone will give you a hint in the right direction. > I note some of the mutopia examples > I've referred to use a lot of deprecated syntax.. However I do recall > the online (static) manual mentions 'simultaneous' and {} as shorthand. Of course, you want to stick to the shorthand as soon as you do any serious typesetting. > One thing I'm interested in - has anyone thought of using XML as a > neutral definition language in front of LilyPond? Potentially more > verbose, but there are potential benefits as well. (Probably will start > this as a separate thread if I get any takers on this question.) Developing a definition language is a tedious task, the current Lilypond input language has evolved gradually over many years. It would certainly be possible to develop another syntax but I must admit I don't see any benefits. In my opinion, one of the major advantages of Lilypond is that you can enter the music fairly quickly without having to spoil you arm using the mouse, so verbosity is a clear disadvantage in this case, unless it could lower the learning threshold for a beginner. I don't see how XML could help in that respect. Regards /Mats _______________________________________________ Lilypond-user mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user