Re: Macro pre-processing?

[Rick Hansen (aka RickH)]

Macro pre-processors should generate source code, and stream it in, period. 
Macros have nothing to do with compilation or scheme or c++ or anything else
in lilypond.  They should just provide some logical constructs like
IF/THEN/ELSE, LOOPING, and CASE, and other functions like
concatenation/replacement of strings.  Allowing one to stream unvalidated
strings as source code emerging from a macro, note the macro should not care
if the outputted source is valid or not, the macro should not even know it's
outputting source code for lilypond, for that matter.  Compile time will
tell you your errors and if your macros is generating garbage or not.

I currently have a 10,000 line LP file that I would LOVE to shorten up by
having a flexible macro-pre-processor to generate the source code for me
instead of me copy/pasting every time I want to add something.  (this
particular file is a guitar chords library of fret markups and growing).  It
has about 5 or 6 lines of source per fret diagram, I know I can write a
macro to generate the source code one line per chord in all enharmonic root
spellings.

Currently each chord with all roots across 20 frets means about 150 source
code lines per chord, that could be one source code line with the
availability of a macro processor.  But with the current music function the
compiler keeps getting in my way before I can generate the source code.

I just want to output strings into the input stream dynamically, that goes
beyond \include files and offers concat, replacement of tokens, and some
rudimentary logical constructs, etc. at PRE-compile-time, empasize at
PRE-COMPILE-TIME.


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