Re: Emacs and lilypond

[Thorsten Jolitz]

phillip.lord@russet.org.uk (Phillip Lord) writes:

> I've just been trying lilypond with Emacs, and the situation seems
> fairly poor.
>
> Currently, it appears there no modes on any of the package repos. There
> is a mode distributed with lilypond itself, but this looks fairly old
> (it has emacs-19 compatability code), is not namespace clean and some of
> the functionality is broken.
>
> There is also https://github.com/nsceaux/lyqi, again not on a package
> repo, and described by the author as "buggy".
>
> Then, https://github.com/jmgpena/lilypond-mode, which is the lilypond
> distributed mode but updated.
>
> And, finally, https://github.com/jstamant/lilypond-mode which is a new
> mode.
>
> Any feedback on the best route to go!

I once used Lilypond with Org Babel to create something like an "Org-mode
Bandbook", that is an Org document that contains all of the songs a band
plays, as well as contact info of the band members, and the bands tour
and rehearsal schedule:

,----
| https://github.com/tj64/org-bandbook 
`----

I based it on the great Openbook project from Mark Veltzer:

,----
| https://github.com/veltzer/openbook
`----

There are (syntax) transformation functions for both directions - from
Openbook files to Org-mode files and vice versa. And I made use of
Lilyponds (musical) transformation facilities, making it easy to print
such a bandbook for different instrumentalists (C-Version, Bb-Version,
Eb-Version etc.).

IIRC I left it in a working state, but the results had a very plain
latex textbook look.
If I have a practical use case for it, I will continue to develop it and
look for a nice latex style, in the meantime I would be happy if others
become interested in the project and contribute.

The nice thing is that all the hard work is done by others:
 - the Openbook project converts sheet music to lilypond
 - Org-mode replaces Lilypond Book and allows to create very
   sophisticated documents around the scores

I would say that building on the current state of the project, creating
a really beautiful Bandbook (for C and transposing instruments) that is
easy to modify and maintain, would require mostly good Org-mode and
Latex skills, not so much Elisp or Lilypond skills (as long as the songs
are from Openbook or so.)

But with regards to the original question: using Org Babel, its just
about editing plain Lilypond code in source blocks, and I did not get so
involved that I noticed any shortcomnings of lilypond-mode.el. All the
compilation stuff was handled nicely by ob-lilypond in the background.

-- 
cheers,
Thorsten