RE: Coexisting 2.8 with 2.4

[Mats Bengtsson]

Quoting Fairchild <address@hidden>:

> Mats -
>
> Thanks for your usual thoughtful response.
>
> IMO, at 2.4 LilyPond achieved four stars.
>
> Many have invested extensive effort in creating quality scores with various
> versions.  To encourage upgrading there should be some automated mechanism
> for upward compatibility, or earlier versions should be supported.
>
> The string replacement capabilities in convert-ly are useful, but far from
> adequate.
>
> While added Lily features are welcome, many changes are effort-consuming to
> convert with no apparent gain.  An trivial example: \markup { \column < {"A"
> "B" } { "C" "D" } > }  has changed syntax and result.
>
> See ** inserts below.
>
>                         - Bruce
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mats Bengtsson [mailto:address@hidden
> Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2006 7:21 AM
> To: Fairchild
> Cc: 'Thomas Scharkowski'; address@hidden
> Subject: RE: Coexisting 2.8 with 2.4
>
>
> Quoting Fairchild <address@hidden>:
>
> > Thomas, et. al. -
> >
> > Successfully installed 2.8.5-1.  Some findings and questions:
> >
> > 1)  2.8 adds to the PATH at installation - doesn't seem necessary.
>
> Maybe not if you only access it via jEdit, but it's certainly very
> convenient if you want to call LilyPond from a command prompt. Not to
> mention if you want to use midi2ly or convert-ly or any of the
> other programs that you can't reach via any menu or double-clicking.
>
> ** Yes, but.  It would be polite to ask or inform, not change the PATH
> surreptitiously.

I hope I don't offend any Windows user, but my guess is that many 
Windows users don't even know what $PATH is, so they may just get
confused by such a question.

> > 2)  2.8 changes the ly file association and icon - annoying.
>
> The file association and icon (which you can drag your .ly files
> to) is very convenient for the 99% of LilyPond users who don't want to have
> multiple versions installed at the same time (or maybe I
> missed what you found annoying).
>
> ** Clicking an ly file should open in an editor of choice, not initiate
> processing - my opinion.

I hope you have realized that all these options are available when you 
right-click on the file. If you don't use an editor that has
built-in support for running LilyPond (i.e. not jEdit or Emacs), then 
you certainly want to process the file many more times than you want to 
open it, so I actually prefer the current choice.

> ** Not for the desktop shortcut icon - for ly files.  An icon was assigned.
> Why change it?

I don't get what you mean.

> > 3)  How to get the 2.4 default font in 2.8?
>
> In 2.4, the only(!?) available fonts were the TeX fonts. In 2.8, you
> have access to all the fonts that are available
> in your other windows programs.
>
> ** Including the TeX fonts?

I was just about to say that you get the same selection of fonts that
you have available in MS Word, but it turns out that if you MikTeX
installed, then MS Word knows about the Computer Modern fonts, but
LilyPond (or rather Pango) doesn't. I have no clue why, though.


> > 6)  Thanks for the suggestion to use the command line - awkward but
> > tolerable - it works sometimes - sometimes Lily crashes - haven't
> > nailed a discriminator.

??? There's a bug in version 2.8.4 and 2.8.5 so that you don't get
any printouts in the command windows. Are you saying that you have
examples where Lily crashes when you call it from the command line, but 
not when you double-click on the file? Normally, when Lily
crashes, it's due to some error in the input file.

> > 7)  What's a correct command line to get dvi?  Using " . . .
> > usr/bin/lilypond-windows.exe -b=tex --dvi test" finds an error in
> > init.ly.
>
> The TEX and DVI back-ends are more or less unsupported. Why would you want
> the DVI.
>
> ** Point-and-click and convenient preview from jEdit.

Point-and-click works from Acrobat! Unfortunately, GSView doesn't
accept LilyPond generated PostsScript files, otherwise viewing
the PS files is a good alternative on most other operating systems.



I guess that many of your concerns actually relate to the fact that
Bertalan hasn't had the time to keep jEdit up-to-date with the latest
LilyPond versions.

  /Mats