Thank you all for your help on this.
My original question, "how does Lilypond recognize the end of the
definition of a variable" has been answered: the definition has to be a
single, complete expression.
Which of course produces another question: "what is classed as a single
expression?"
Well, I think I understand what a music expression is. A single music
expression is any music (possibly including sub-expressions) enclosed
between { }, and optionally preceded by \new <context>.
Oh yes, and it can also be preceded by \relative.
And perhaps one or two other things. Or maybe not.
Non-music expressions are varied: a quoted string is, not surprisingly,
a single expression. \paper { ... } is one expression. 4.5\cm is
equivalent to a particular Scheme expression. (!)
And, as pointed out, this is far from a complete list.
No wonder I was, and to some extent am, confused!
But I do have a clearer idea now of what can and cannot be used in a
variable. The form is not quite as flexible as I had hoped, but it may
well be that it makes better sense for a variable to represent a
complete expression rather than any arbitrary chunk of the same file
without variables.
David
_______________________________________________
lilypond-user mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
