Re: Lilypond integration

[Johannes Asal]

Piero Faustini pierofaust...@... writes:

 
 I understand what are your needs, because almost identical as mine.
 I had to discard lilypond-book because it was too difficoult to integrate 
 with 
 LyX. I must admit I didn't try too much: but I use a lot of multiple-pass 
 packages such BibLaTeX (a sort of enhanced bibTeX), indexes and so on, so I 
 think it would be difficuolt to have everything work without problems, and 
 almost impossible to have a working instant preview of the whole doc.
  It seems that a theory book (as a musicological research on librettoes) 
 doesn't need a lot of long music examples, so the advantages of lilypond-book 
 (basically: ability to draw music snipetts in different environments) are not 
 so important.
 This is what I use: I have a directory of musical examples in .ly files, 
 which 
 have a simple code that have all the white space cut. (can't find the thread 
 where this was discussed, I will post it later).
 I use Insert - File - External material - Lilypond file. It can give instant 
 preview (and allows direct link to the predefined Lilypond editor, if you 
 find 
 some error) so is ALMOST as having the code directly in the LyX doc.
 If you need multiple lines examples, this can be hard to achieve if you need 
 lines to cross between pages, but I think a solution can be found. Stay tuned.
 Hope it was clear
 
 

Thanks for your answer. I was checking the nabble forum so I didn't read your
posts. I think the External material solution is not optimal, as it forces you
to interrupt your creative process. You need to switch to another application
and create a lilypond file, then go back to lyx and import it. Of course you
could prepare all the files before starting to write the text, but who knows
exactly what kind of musical examples he will need in his book?

I'm not really sure, what would be the best solution. But what I'm sure about is
that there should be a solution. Not even Finale or Sibelius provide real
support for writing musicological documents. Considering the price you have to
pay for them, that's a real shame.

Re: Lilypond integration

[Johannes Asal]

Piero Faustini pierofaust...@... writes:

 
 I understand what are your needs, because almost identical as mine.
 I had to discard lilypond-book because it was too difficoult to integrate 
 with 
 LyX. I must admit I didn't try too much: but I use a lot of multiple-pass 
 packages such BibLaTeX (a sort of enhanced bibTeX), indexes and so on, so I 
 think it would be difficuolt to have everything work without problems, and 
 almost impossible to have a working instant preview of the whole doc.
  It seems that a theory book (as a musicological research on librettoes) 
 doesn't need a lot of long music examples, so the advantages of lilypond-book 
 (basically: ability to draw music snipetts in different environments) are not 
 so important.
 This is what I use: I have a directory of musical examples in .ly files, 
 which 
 have a simple code that have all the white space cut. (can't find the thread 
 where this was discussed, I will post it later).
 I use Insert - File - External material - Lilypond file. It can give instant 
 preview (and allows direct link to the predefined Lilypond editor, if you 
 find 
 some error) so is ALMOST as having the code directly in the LyX doc.
 If you need multiple lines examples, this can be hard to achieve if you need 
 lines to cross between pages, but I think a solution can be found. Stay tuned.
 Hope it was clear
 
 

Thanks for your answer. I was checking the nabble forum so I didn't read your
posts. I think the External material solution is not optimal, as it forces you
to interrupt your creative process. You need to switch to another application
and create a lilypond file, then go back to lyx and import it. Of course you
could prepare all the files before starting to write the text, but who knows
exactly what kind of musical examples he will need in his book?

I'm not really sure, what would be the best solution. But what I'm sure about is
that there should be a solution. Not even Finale or Sibelius provide real
support for writing musicological documents. Considering the price you have to
pay for them, that's a real shame.

Re: Lilypond integration

[Johannes Asal]

Piero Faustini  writes:

> 
> I understand what are your needs, because almost identical as mine.
> I had to discard lilypond-book because it was too difficoult to integrate 
> with 
> LyX. I must admit I didn't try too much: but I use a lot of multiple-pass 
> packages such BibLaTeX (a sort of enhanced bibTeX), indexes and so on, so I 
> think it would be difficuolt to have everything work without problems, and 
> almost impossible to have a working instant preview of the whole doc.
>  It seems that a theory book (as a musicological research on librettoes) 
> doesn't need a lot of long music examples, so the advantages of lilypond-book 
> (basically: ability to draw music snipetts in different environments) are not 
> so important.
> This is what I use: I have a directory of musical examples in .ly files, 
> which 
> have a simple code that have all the white space cut. (can't find the thread 
> where this was discussed, I will post it later).
> I use Insert - File - External material - Lilypond file. It can give instant 
> preview (and allows direct link to the predefined Lilypond editor, if you 
> find 
> some error) so is ALMOST as having the code directly in the LyX doc.
> If you need multiple lines examples, this can be hard to achieve if you need 
> lines to cross between pages, but I think a solution can be found. Stay tuned.
> Hope it was clear
> 
> 

Thanks for your answer. I was checking the nabble forum so I didn't read your
posts. I think the External material solution is not optimal, as it forces you
to interrupt your creative process. You need to switch to another application
and create a lilypond file, then go back to lyx and import it. Of course you
could prepare all the files before starting to write the text, but who knows
exactly what kind of musical examples he will need in his book?

I'm not really sure, what would be the best solution. But what I'm sure about is
that there should be a solution. Not even Finale or Sibelius provide real
support for writing musicological documents. Considering the price you have to
pay for them, that's a real shame.

Re: Lilypond integration

[Johannes Asal]

I know that you can include Lilypond material by External Material. That's
ok when you have few notation examples in your text and I appreciate that
someone took the time to implement it. But I'm trying to write a book about
jazz harmonics and therefore I need many musical examples that have to be
changed often in the writing process. The main problems I have with the
External Material approach are the following:

1. It interrupts the creative process, because you need to prepare the
lilypond snippets in another editor and import them afterwards
2. You don't have a preview and therefore it is a bit difficult to see
whether you have written something already or not
3. If you have to change one of the snippets, you have to find the
corresponding file

I don't know if it's possible, but the ideal solution (for me) would be some
kind of lilypond environment (somewhat like the math environment), where you
can type in your lilypond code directly. After leaving this environment, the
graphic is rendered and put into place in the LyX document. If you need to
change it, you just click on the graphic and the code environment pops up
again.

This is of course not a simple modification to do, and I guess it wouldn't
be that fun either, but I'm sure it would be a valueable addition to LyX's
feature list because as far as I know there is no solution today that
combines text with music typesetting in a convenient and straightforward
way. I would even volunteer for implementing parts of it if needed.

Johannes Asal

2009/3/10 Helge Hafting helge.haft...@hist.no

 j.asal wrote:

 Hi,

 I want to write a music theory book with LyX. For musical examples I would
 like to use Lilypond, but there seems to be no support for including and
 displaying Lilypond snippets (apart from importing whole Lilypond files).
 I
 know that one could use lilypond-book to postprocess files with embedded
 lilypond code, but then you don't have any preview and you can't use LyX
 to
 'compile' the latex file. Any ideas/suggestions?


 I created what little support there is for lilypond in LyX. Mostly because
 it was easy and interesting to do.  It'd be interesting to know more about
 what kind of lilypond support that actually is useful.

 Currently, LyX can use lilypond files that takes up a page or less. This
 because LyX runs the file through the lilypond software for you, obtains a
 pdf or postscript file, and includes that as a graphical object.

 This lets you typeset pieces of music that is less than a page each, and
 get them into the LyX document. Maybe it is also possible to create small
 examples such as a single chord and include it in the middle of a line of
 text. I haven't actually tried that, but it ought to work.

 The way to do this:
 1. Create a LyX document and a lilypond file
 2. In LyX: Insert-File-External Material
 3. In the external material dialog, change template to LilyPond,
   and insert the correct filename.

 Your music should now appear when you print the LyX file or export a PDF
 file.

 Please let me know if there are problems with this.

 Supporting lilypond-book would need a different approach, because the
 processing is different.

 Helge Hafting

Re: Lilypond integration

[Johannes Asal]

I know that you can include Lilypond material by External Material. That's
ok when you have few notation examples in your text and I appreciate that
someone took the time to implement it. But I'm trying to write a book about
jazz harmonics and therefore I need many musical examples that have to be
changed often in the writing process. The main problems I have with the
External Material approach are the following:

1. It interrupts the creative process, because you need to prepare the
lilypond snippets in another editor and import them afterwards
2. You don't have a preview and therefore it is a bit difficult to see
whether you have written something already or not
3. If you have to change one of the snippets, you have to find the
corresponding file

I don't know if it's possible, but the ideal solution (for me) would be some
kind of lilypond environment (somewhat like the math environment), where you
can type in your lilypond code directly. After leaving this environment, the
graphic is rendered and put into place in the LyX document. If you need to
change it, you just click on the graphic and the code environment pops up
again.

This is of course not a simple modification to do, and I guess it wouldn't
be that fun either, but I'm sure it would be a valueable addition to LyX's
feature list because as far as I know there is no solution today that
combines text with music typesetting in a convenient and straightforward
way. I would even volunteer for implementing parts of it if needed.

Johannes Asal

2009/3/10 Helge Hafting helge.haft...@hist.no

 j.asal wrote:

 Hi,

 I want to write a music theory book with LyX. For musical examples I would
 like to use Lilypond, but there seems to be no support for including and
 displaying Lilypond snippets (apart from importing whole Lilypond files).
 I
 know that one could use lilypond-book to postprocess files with embedded
 lilypond code, but then you don't have any preview and you can't use LyX
 to
 'compile' the latex file. Any ideas/suggestions?


 I created what little support there is for lilypond in LyX. Mostly because
 it was easy and interesting to do.  It'd be interesting to know more about
 what kind of lilypond support that actually is useful.

 Currently, LyX can use lilypond files that takes up a page or less. This
 because LyX runs the file through the lilypond software for you, obtains a
 pdf or postscript file, and includes that as a graphical object.

 This lets you typeset pieces of music that is less than a page each, and
 get them into the LyX document. Maybe it is also possible to create small
 examples such as a single chord and include it in the middle of a line of
 text. I haven't actually tried that, but it ought to work.

 The way to do this:
 1. Create a LyX document and a lilypond file
 2. In LyX: Insert-File-External Material
 3. In the external material dialog, change template to LilyPond,
   and insert the correct filename.

 Your music should now appear when you print the LyX file or export a PDF
 file.

 Please let me know if there are problems with this.

 Supporting lilypond-book would need a different approach, because the
 processing is different.

 Helge Hafting

Re: Lilypond integration

[Johannes Asal]

I know that you can include Lilypond material by External Material. That's
ok when you have few notation examples in your text and I appreciate that
someone took the time to implement it. But I'm trying to write a book about
jazz harmonics and therefore I need many musical examples that have to be
changed often in the writing process. The main problems I have with the
External Material approach are the following:

1. It interrupts the creative process, because you need to prepare the
lilypond snippets in another editor and import them afterwards
2. You don't have a preview and therefore it is a bit difficult to see
whether you have written something already or not
3. If you have to change one of the snippets, you have to find the
corresponding file

I don't know if it's possible, but the ideal solution (for me) would be some
kind of lilypond environment (somewhat like the math environment), where you
can type in your lilypond code directly. After leaving this environment, the
graphic is rendered and put into place in the LyX document. If you need to
change it, you just click on the graphic and the code environment pops up
again.

This is of course not a simple modification to do, and I guess it wouldn't
be that fun either, but I'm sure it would be a valueable addition to LyX's
feature list because as far as I know there is no solution today that
combines text with music typesetting in a convenient and straightforward
way. I would even volunteer for implementing parts of it if needed.

Johannes Asal

2009/3/10 Helge Hafting <helge.haft...@hist.no>

> j.asal wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I want to write a music theory book with LyX. For musical examples I would
>> like to use Lilypond, but there seems to be no support for including and
>> displaying Lilypond snippets (apart from importing whole Lilypond files).
>> I
>> know that one could use lilypond-book to postprocess files with embedded
>> lilypond code, but then you don't have any preview and you can't use LyX
>> to
>> 'compile' the latex file. Any ideas/suggestions?
>>
>
> I created what little support there is for lilypond in LyX. Mostly because
> it was easy and interesting to do.  It'd be interesting to know more about
> what kind of lilypond support that actually is useful.
>
> Currently, LyX can use lilypond files that takes up a page or less. This
> because LyX runs the file through the lilypond software for you, obtains a
> pdf or postscript file, and includes that as a graphical object.
>
> This lets you typeset pieces of music that is less than a page each, and
> get them into the LyX document. Maybe it is also possible to create small
> examples such as a single chord and include it in the middle of a line of
> text. I haven't actually tried that, but it ought to work.
>
> The way to do this:
> 1. Create a LyX document and a lilypond file
> 2. In LyX: "Insert->File->External Material"
> 3. In the external material dialog, change "template" to LilyPond",
>   and insert the correct filename.
>
> Your music should now appear when you print the LyX file or export a PDF
> file.
>
> Please let me know if there are problems with this.
>
> Supporting lilypond-book would need a different approach, because the
> processing is different.
>
> Helge Hafting
>
>
>