This is certainly a very important issue. However, for the changes
between 2.10 and 2.11
(and the coming 2.12), very few affect the actual syntax and convert-ly
should handle
them very well. Compared to some earlier version upgrades, you should
expect a very
smooth procedure. The main exception is if you previously have done lots
of manual adjustments
to handle the vertical positioning of things like bar numbers,
articulations and text scripts.
Since these now are handled much better by default, the old fixes will
probably make the
result worse if they remain in a 2.11 score.
I think this points very clearly to the main problem here. Nobody can
argue that it's a
bad thing that LilyPond 2.11 produces a much nicer result by default.
Still, this is a
non-compatible change that can cause quite some manual extra work for
each user
who wants to update all his/her old files. Also, we don't have the
programming resources
available to maintain a number of backwards compatibility features.
/Mats
Laura Conrad wrote:
In The LilyPond Report #4, Valentin Villenave writes:
So, what can make you use an old LilyPond version? Is LilyPond
"moving too fast", as suggested on the Download page? (Honestly,
I've always seen that as a purely rhetorical question.)
Is it because of your Linux distribution? Is it a matter of taste?
In my case, it's usually because convert-ly isn't converting something
important. I was on 2.0.6 until the current version was 2.8, because
there was no way to automatically convert lyrics between 2.0 and 2.4.
(I may have the exact numbers wrong.) Yes, the manual change was
pretty easy, but I have hundreds of pieces, each of which has a dozen
or so lilypond files, so doing a manual conversion is not trivial.
Even if you manage to script it on the piece level, it still is a
major time investment to run the script and look at the output.
So the "moving too fast" question is not at all rhetorical. If you're
trying to put together a book, and you have to convert the earlier
pieces several times before you finish transcribing the later pieces,
some people consider that "moving too fast". Or the developers might
consider that the transcribers are "moving too slow".
I consider it unfortunate that lily development seems to live on the
bleeding edge of so many programs. So I currently have a pretty major
project that I can't recompile because I'd have to hand-convert all
the lyrics to run the current version, and I can no longer run the
older version on my relatively current Ubuntu linux system.
The reason I'm currently using 2.10 instead of 2.11, which would
enable me to make more of a contribution to testing current
development, is that I've never managed to convince the developers
that there should be a feature freeze some weeks or months before a
stable release. I got burned badly having to convert lilypond files
from an odd-numbered version before I could use them on a stable
version once, so now all my production work (which is most of my work)
is on stable versions.
I've once thought I didn't like the look of the newer version as well
as the older version, but once I got used to it, I decided I was
wrong. (It was when the lyrics font changed sometime before 2.8.)
--
=============================================
Mats Bengtsson
Signal Processing
School of Electrical Engineering
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)
SE-100 44 STOCKHOLM
Sweden
Phone: (+46) 8 790 8463
Fax: (+46) 8 790 7260
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
WWW: http://www.s3.kth.se/~mabe
=============================================
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