Re: Macros

[Tom Cato Amundsen]

On Mon, 2002-05-27 at 23:06, Erik Sandberg wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> The recent talk about footnotes reflects quite well something I miss in 
> Lilypond (right now I write footnotes as comments). However, to make a very 
> good (scientific AND playble) edition of a piece, it should be both very 
> readable and contain much information. This is a problem, since too much 
> information makes things harder to read, but the problem is easily solvable 
> by creating two different scores: one which is extremely rigorous, and all 
> notes exactly as they were in the original, and one with no footnotes and 
> "bad" notes corrected. For example:
> 
> Scientific:
> a8 b c\footnote{"c in manuscript, should be a cis"} d
> (or whatever the syntax will be)
> Readable:
> a8 b cis d
> 
> In this case, information sharing would be good: Maintaining two separate 
> files for the two versions feels a bit primitive (though it's probably what 
> I'm going to do). What really would be needed to make this kind of thing 
> smoothly is some kind of simple preprocessor, like what in C would be 
> expressed as
> a8 b
> #ifdef scientific
> c\footnote{..}
> #else
> cis
> #endif
> d

Nothing is stopping you from using cpp for this now. Don't have to write
a completely new preprocessor for this.

> but with a simpler syntax of course. This would also allow simple 
> arrangements of pieces, e.g. a basso continuo part written for cello could be 
> arranged to guitar just by placing "#ifdef"s around the instrument name and 
> \clef, and around any notes that need to be changed due to instrument 
> differences (e.g. replacing "d," with "d" since d, is outside the guitar's 
> range).
> 
> I don't know Lilypond extremely well, so there might actually 
> be some way to do this kind of information sharing fairly smoothly (I have 
> found a few dirty ways to do most of the simplest tasks, but not simply 
> enough to be really useful).
> 
> Is there already a good way to do this, and if not, does it sound sensible to 
> add a preprocessor to Lilypond?
> 
> Erik
> 
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-- 
Tom Cato Amundsen <address@hidden>
GNU Solfege - free eartraining, http://www.gnu.org/software/solfege/