Re: Issue 903 in lilypond: Enhancement: a more user-friendly way to specify notename languages

[lilypond]

Comment #13 on issue 903 by veryfurryfur: Enhancement: a more user-friendly  
way to specify notename languages
http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=903

Thanks. Again, I am most likely wrong because I'm new here, but I'm trying  
to understand.
What do you mean by "noiceable version number change"? 2.14? 3.0?

> "Tool x can process Lilypond files of version y or later"

This can never be strictly true, else it means that all changes in lilypond  
syntax
must be forward-compatible, which according to the first line of the  
convert-ly
documentation, historically they have not been.

Indeed, convert-ly --show-rules seems to confirm this, since it outputs a  
number of
minor-release transformations that are not forward-compatible, or at least  
that's my
interpretation, and incidentally I wonder if they are even  
backward-compatible. One
of them chosen at random is

2.7.10: \applyxxx -> \applyXxx

(I am assuming that \applyXxx did not exist prior to 2.7.10.)

If on the other hand there is an explicit agreement between lilypond and  
dependent
tools that non-forward-compatible changes to the syntax must occur in a  
major
lilypond release, then fair enough.
If not, we may want to play nice and give the various dependent tools some  
notice, or
negotiate a deadline for the inclusion of this syntax change. But again I  
would ask,
what has been done in the past?

Just to be clear, since the proposed change is backwards-compatible  
(lilypond will
always allow \include), convert-ly for this command will have to do  
_nothing_ to
convert from an old version to a new one.

By the way, does convert-ly also do downgrades? It's not too clear from the
documentation. If so, in order to convert a new version to a previous one  
it needs to
basically substitute \language "xxx" with \include "xxx.ly", after checking  
that xxx
is in the list of supported languages.

Thank you

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