Re: Sibelius Software UK office shuts down

[David Kastrup]

Tim Roberts <address@hidden> writes:

> George_ wrote:
>> WRT (1): Someone in this thread suggested using individual threads to render
>> a bar at a time. The end result would be messy, but what if one or two
>> threads were dedicated to running 'behind' the main threads to clean up and
>> knit together output?
>
> Multithreading works well when there are "natural" subdivisions of the
> work.  It's really hard to come up with a "natural" subdivision for
> Lilypond.  Bars are not particularly fundamental to Lilypond music.  Bar
> lines are just another thing that get engraved.  Plus, Lilypond does not
> require that all staves in a system have the same bar structure. 
> Dividing into systems would be convenient, but you don't really know
> where the next system starts until you're done with the current one.

Uh, no?  AFAIK, LilyPond uses linear programming, and that requires
combing through a currently active set of optima and generating the next
set.  That is at its heart a parallel operation.

> Having done quite a lot of threaded programming, when I think of the
> job Lilypond is doing, I don't see any natural breakdown.  It's a very
> sequential process.

Hm.

-- 
David Kastrup