Re: Lilypond-book and xelatex [was: Re: Lilypond-book not working after installing Python 3]

[Joseph Wakeling]

Graham Percival wrote:
> If you know python, or don't count time learning it towards the
> estaimte, then 5 hours for basic usability.  Maybe 15 for using
> advanced xelatex stuff?
> 
> Note that I don't know what the difference is between xelatex and
> pdflatex; I'm just going on the fact that they both act on text
> and graphics files, and lilypond-book produces text and graphics
> files.

Well, based on my (brief, wholly inadequate...) experience, based purely
on LaTeX and never before touching on Lilypond, a file that compiles
with pdflatex should also compile with xelatex -- the converse of course
is not true, because xelatex allows for utf-8 input and has nice
features to let it work with OTF fonts.

A couple of brief tests saw no problem with doing the following:

lilypond-book --pdf myfile.lytex
xelatex myfile.tex

... although problems do emerge if the --pdf option is left out.  Not
sure why.

For a further test I added a line

  \usepackage{libertine}

to the .lytex file, which calls the xelatex-only Linux Libertine OTF
font package.  I got a warning while running lilypond-book:

------------------------------------------------------------------
LaTeX Font Warning: Font shape `OT1/fxl/m/n' undefined
(Font)              using `OT1/cmr/m/n' instead on input line 6.

textwidth=345.0pt
columnsep=10.0pt
(./tmpdr5SNl.aux)

LaTeX Font Warning: Some font shapes were not available, defaults
substituted.
------------------------------------------------------------------

... but the output doesn't appear to be affected: the Linux Libertine
font appeared without problem in the text of the document, and the
Lilypond musical extracts used their normal default fonts.

So my feeling is that xelatex is probably substantially fine to use as
the .tex compiler, so long as lilypond-book is run with the --pdf
option.  There are probably tweaks that can be made, but much will work
without them.

Best wishes,

    -- Joe