Re: Setting page size from the command line

[Joe Neeman]

On Tue, 11 Apr 2006 17:19, Cameron Horsburgh wrote:
> Joe Neeman wrote:
> >> ERROR: Unbound variable: a5
> >
> > -dpaper-size=\"letter\" works for me. But it seems as though
> > -dpaper-size=letter would be the better way. Is there a reason it doesn't
> > work this way?
>
> Good question. Using the quotes isn't that obvious, and escaping them
> even less so. I'll submit it this way for documentation purposes, but if
> this behaviour could be changed I think we'll all be better off!

Without having looked at the code, I'd say that the reason is that the 
argument gets parsed as a scheme value. So if you say -dpaper-size=HELLO, 
that is equivalent to having
#(set-default-paper-size HELLO)
in your file. But of course you want something like
#(set-default-paper-size "HELLO")
because the scheme name HELLO is undefined, you need the constant string 
"HELLO" instead. So lilypond needs to receive the string "HELLO" which means 
you need to escape the '"'s or the shell will remove them.

I don't know if that information helps at all, but at least it provides some 
sort of motivation for the behaviour. In any case, I would vote for changing 
it too.

Joe