Re: oldie/newbie convert/fresco question

[Jean Abou Samra]

Hi Jay,

Le 02/08/2021 à 15:50, jh a écrit :
> Hello-
> Jean, I think you clarified a few things. 1] I don't need online 
> connection, 2] that the Fresco button is merely a GUI, 3] you thought 
> I was using a terminal which I am not so during the ongoing-forever 
> attempt there was no error/message it just ran,


Oh, I didn't, telling about the terminal was essentially
illustrative (but it could also assist debugging).
When you run convert-ly in Frescobaldi, the log
from convert-ly is printed. For example, deliberately
introducing an infinite loop in the conversion rule
for version 2.23.4, I get the log in this screenshot,
which shows the conversion is hanging on 2.23.4:





So where does it stop for you? Does this happen on
all files? If not, could you send an example file
where the program never finishes?

If it does not print any output at all, something
is going wrong with the OS as David mentioned.
If there is some kind of output, it could be something
else (like, technically speaking, a regular expression
with catastrophic backtracking).


> 4] Fresco does update individual files to newest version but it does 
> not change the format/layout that i am familiar with in 2.18 which is 
> very confusing as all the latest examples of ly questions are totally 
> foreign to me.
> This is the part that where you ask if documentation should be clearer 
> is a problem.
> The changes of where information goes after 2.18 made/make little 
> sense to me as the 2.18 ways worked for a very long time and to change 
> them without any ability to understand the why of the change 
> (sometimes that explanation was 'better coding' but since I am not a 
> coder doesn't mean anything/is not an explanation that tells me the 
> how or why; and perhaps means I am not to understand) and after years 
> of using lily it felt like I was going to have to start completely over.


Could you give examples? Usually, LilyPond contributors
try not to break existing functionality when adding new
functionality. Of course, some amount of breakage is
occasionally necessary, but convert-ly typically does
a good job (ok, you have not been able to run it yet)
and the necessary manual changes are few. So the changes
are supposed to extend the range of what you can do
with LilyPond without hampering your existing uses.

When you say "format/layout", do you mean the layout of
the code (indentation etc.) or the layout of the printed
music?


> Since 2.18 worked fine starting over seemed/seems not an option.  I 
> like many am a working composer. The time I spent learning (still 
> learning) how to use the program to do what I wanted to do took a few 
> years and as I say I am still learning to do it with the older 
> version.  To get work done after the pencil work at an instrument it 
> always was more efficient to stay with what I knew, that worked, than 
> to spend time unproductively relearning for the same result.
> I am going on too long but most of the questions I read about are very 
> very technical and not in my range of needs.  So again the urge to 
> change is diminished.
>
> Thank you for clarifying the online not online question, I am fearful 
> since I will be using the new version that I will not understand the 
> why or even the how to layout lily that I will be back with absurdly 
> simple questions but also hope this will not be the case.

Feel free -- there are no dumb questions on
this list!

Best,
Jean