Getting started with Scheme

[Paul McKay]

Hi

I’d like to be able to do all those funky things with Scheme functions. I downloaded and installed the latest versions of everything (LilyPond 2.20.0) and it works fine. Then I went to http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.20/Documentation/extending/scheme-sandbox and got stuck. I’m running Windows 10 and accepted all the defaults on installation. I have Frescobaldi 3.1.2 as well (in case that’s relevant).

When the documentation refers to ‘opening a terminal window’ I assume this means a command prompt of some kind. (If so, it would be good to use this terminology. Not many of us remember the VT52 emulators.) I have tried both PowerShell and Command. First I set GUILE_LOAD_PATH as required (to 'C:\Program Files (x86)\LilyPond\usr\share\guile\1.8').

My copy of windows doesn’t have a Start menu: so that’s another instruction that is meaningless.

I then adjusted the PATH variable so that it included the  ly/usr/bin directory and tried lilypond scheme-sandbox x.

The result was:

lilypond : GNU LilyPond 2.20.0

At line:1 char:1

+ lilypond scheme-sandbox

+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (GNU LilyPond 2.20.0:String) [], RemoteException

    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : NativeCommandError

Processing `C:/Program Files (x86)/LilyPond/usr/share/lilypond/current/ly/scheme-sandbox.ly'

Parsing...

At which point I’m presented with an unresponsive terminal. I exit via Ctrl-C.

I would be grateful for any help to get this going: or a redirection to a better environment. Is there a Scheme IDE? I’ve never seen anything like a comment in Scheme code. I wonder is it a write-only language, the way APL was.

Thanks

Paul McKay