Re: Patch for LaTeX lilypond-syntax change

[David Kastrup]

Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:

> On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 12:14 PM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>> It seems somewhat underhanded to just silently change all the example
>> files and docs, and just mention in the changelog that the old syntax
>> remains supported.  But I don't see that talking more excessively about
>> the "old" syntax and its legacy support is helping anybody.
>
> Well, you could add a @knownissues to the lilypond-book docs
> mentioning the deprecated syntax.

It's not really an issue that old files with a different syntax happen
to continue to work.  And this back compatibility has no known
downsides.

> If you're thinking about users, then no, we officially have No
> Sympathy (tm) for people who use unstable versions without reading the
> Changes.  :)

I guess if the old syntax is to be deprecated (and it causes problems
with LaTeX-aware editors and tools and startles LaTeX users, and
_likely_ ), this deprecation needs to be a news
item at some point of time.

By the way, I found that (apart from spacing issues)

lilypond-book --filter 'cat' lily.lytex

will write out lily.tex as a LaTeX file with the "new" syntax.  Even if
you are using the _old_ lilypond-book executable.  Which should tell you
something about how consistent support for the old syntax actually was.

-- 
David Kastrup