Re: Newbie beyond recovery or definition, it seems

[Mats Bengtsson]

It looks as if you try to view the Lilypond input file 
with the postscript viewer GSView. 

To process a Lilypond file, run

ly2dvi -P plainchant.ly

This will produce a Postscript file, plainchant.ps that you 
can view with GSView.

However, you also have a couple of errors in your example file, 
see my comments below.

>      I'm experimenting with LilyPond as a way of creating some simple 
> melody lines I can kludge into explanations of chant.  However, GSview 
> keeps spitting up the first .ly file I've created (see below), complaining 
> of an undefined term, and I can't find anything in the FAQs or list 
> archives to tell me what I've done wrong.  Also, I'm blest if I can see 
> how to code a key signature such as B-flat; again, I read all over the 
> place in the online docs and then took my best guess at it, but I've no 
> idea that I'm correct.  Elucidation will be welcomed.
> 
> 
> Displaying non DSC file C:/cygwin/home/Dustpuppy/plainchant.ly
> Unrecoverable error: undefined in \header
> 
> --- Begin offending input ---
> \header{
> filename =    "plainchant.ly"
> title =               "Sarum plain chant"
> composer =    "Traditional"
> enteredby =   "sjcw"
> copyright =   "public domain"
> }
> 
> \score {
>   \notes {

You probably want to change the preceeding line to 
   \notes \relative c' {
to get the correct octave.

>      \time 4/4
>      \clef violin
>      \key bes \major
>      d--2 [e8 f8] g4 | a--4 [b8 e8] [b,8 e8 d8 c8] |

I don't know what you expect d--2 to do, it's syntactically 
incorrect. Maybe you want d2-- (a half note with a tenuto mark)
or d-2 (a note with a fingering instruction).

>      b1-\fermata
>      \bar"|."
>   }
>   \paper { }
> }
> --- End offending input ---
> file offset = 0
> gsapi_run_string_continue returns -21
> 
> 
> (Incidentally, adding Gregorian or Sarum notation support to ver 1.5 would 
> be favorite, if it's not slated to go in there already.)

Yes, there has been some work by Juergen Reuter in 1.5.x to introduce 
support for Gregorian chants, see 
http://lilypond.org/development/Documentation/out-www/CHANGES.html
and recent discussions in the mailing list archives.

   /Mats