Re: Suggestion: --no-midi

[Erik Sandberg]

On Friday 06 February 2004 23.45, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> address@hidden writes:
> > I know this feature has been requested & flamed before, but.. I think it
> > would be useful with a --no-midi option. The reason raised the previous
> > request, was that --no-midi would be time saving, which I agree isn't a
> > very strong reason by itself. But I have 3 more reasons:
> > 1) It feels better to be able to control which files the lilypond script
> > (most command-line programs are that way). This would be useful if you
> > are invoking lilypond from a bash script, for example.
> > 2) If lilypond-bin has annoying bugs in its midi output pass, e.g.
> > <flame> it crashes or spits out loads of unmotivated warnings </flame>
> > :), then you may want to disable that pass.
> > 3) It looks good to have a --no-midi option, now that there are --no-ps
> > and --no-pdf options already (to me, those options seem to be about as
> > motivated as --no-midi, as they save about as much time & have a similar
> > effect on the output).
>
> I would vote to remove --no-pdf , --no-ps, -m, --no-paper and
> --no-lily - they clutter the commandline interface. Any objections?

I see your point. My #3 reason was actually the strongest one; and one 
statement I could support is that --no-midi should exist exactly as much as 
--no-pdf and --no-ps do.

Now for --no-pdf,--no-ps,-m,--no-midi... I do think that they can be rather 
useful (at least -m); it is nice to be able to suppress output without having 
to modify the source files. I know this is actually just luxury, but luxury 
can also be good... So if these are to be removed, could it be possible to 
keep that functionality, but in the form of \header settings? This way, the 
command line option -S could be used for all different kinds of output 
suppressions.

Perhaps something like a setting "paper" which could take values like "off", 
"dvi,ps", "ps,pdf" etc, and a setting midi="off"? Where, perhaps, ="off" 
means that \paper or \midi blocks inside \score will be ignored?

> As for the warnings: I have add support for MIDI \lyricsto with beams,
> slurs & ties.

cool

Erik