On Apr 7, 2004, at 4:06 PM, Michael Edwards wrote:
My thanks to those who have given me information about LilyPond.
Perhaps I just need to clarify one thing. Several people have told me that
LilyPond doesn't have a graphic user interface - which I had read on the web
site anyway.
I said that I didn't like graphic user interfaces much anyway, but I'm
beginning to wonder if I didn't word this statement clearly enough, and whether
it is being misunderstood a little. With all the talk about input being
entirely ASCII text, and having to understand a language, I'm almost (maybe not
quite - but almost) getting the impression that LilyPond doesn't display the
music on the screen at all, and that you read the music by reading the text
you've input, and understanding what notation it is specifying.
Technically, this is true, lilypond does not display the music as music. In fact, lilypond does not display anything at all other than processing information. What lilypond does do is compile the source to another format suitable for display (e.g., PDF or MIDI) by another program.
Maybe I've misunderstood the comments I've received in response.
I don't really know that I want a program where I have to work in such an
abstract way, where I can't see the actual musical notation on screen - and when
I said I didn't like graphical user interfaces, I didn't mean that I liked this
way of working; I just meant that I dislike the Macintosh/Windows style of
program design, where every function is represented by silly childish little
pictures instead of a brief, clear text description, and where you have to point
and click to do everything, rather than use the keyboard (as if users were
expected mainly to be only semi-literate).
But (of course - perhaps it seems obvious) I *do* want the music to be
displayed on the screen, and to be able to directly work on elements of
notation: moving them around, changing them, and so on, right before my eyes. I
just want to be able to do this mostly (if not entirely) by using the keyboard,
and not by having to use the mouse hundreds of times an hour. For example, I
want to be able to move to the next note by pressing "Right-Arrow", and the next
bar by pressing "Shift Right-Arrow", and to the next system by pressing "Ctrl
Right-Arrow" and the next page by pressing "Alt Right-Arrow" - or something of
that sort - instead of having to use the mouse to do each of these moves.
(That's only a guess, of course, about the way the keys might work. But you get
the idea.)
If your text editor can understand what 'next note' and 'next bar' and 'next system' mean in terms of lilypond source, than yes, you can do this.
(I once nearly wrecked my right wrist years ago when (obviously having
nothing better to do at the time) I obsessively played a Monopoly game for
several weeks, often hours at a time. It was an MS-DOS program, but it looked
very like a Windows program, and was designed to be operated almost exclusively
with the mouse - a perfect model of appallingly, unbelievably *bad* program
design, in my opinion, and one that has been far too often emulated in Windows
software. Fortunately I recovered fully after I ceased using that program. But
it put me off the mouse for life, and it is one of the great computing mysteries
of life to me why this cumbersome device has become so standard for most
computing applications, instead of being the very specialized graphic tool that
I would have thought it should be, in those few functions where it would be well
suited (which I suppose would be selecting very small portions of a graphic
picture on the screen, and not having to do that too often).)
I have nothing against learning a language to work the program, if that is
efficient. I am a Turbo Pascal programmer, and am familiar with the main
concepts of programming languages. But dealing with such a visual thing as
music notation *entirely* through a programming language does sound a bit
cumbersome.
Then simply think of lilypond as a compiler (infact, you can even run it as a filter that reads from stdin and writes compiled output to stdout). .ly is your source file, and .pdf/.midi/etc is your compiled output. I'd say the lilypond language (mudela?) is not cumbersome, but rather, verbose. But I think that is simply a result of the medium being worked with. I consider the language as a vectorization of music, and therein lies the verbosity.
I would be grateful if someone could please clarify this point for me. And
if the music notation is available for display, is it only in a "Preview" mode,
such as you find in some MS-DOS-based word-processors, and you have to exit that
mode to return to doing things?Or can you work directly on the notation that
is displayed?
Only as much as one can with any compiled code, but with lilypond debugging/previewing is a visual rather than logical exercise.
--mpeltzer
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