Re: reference manual, examples and MIDI

[Valentin Villenave]

2007/2/2, Marc Dimmick <address@hidden>:
> Hello!
>
> I am new to the world of Lilypond. I have to say that I am fascinated by the
> beautiful output it produces. But it's also a very complex program and I find
> myself confused many times. I am working with version 2.10.14

Welcome to LilyPond :)

> I would like to know if someone can help me with the following. While reading
> the Manual I find references to elements I am not sure what or where they are.
> In particular, I have some problems with the following:
>
> When the manual says "See Program Reference" (for example, See Program
> Reference TimeScaleMusic), What does it mean? Where do I find or see the
> program reference? And when it says "see examples" (as in See Example:
> input/regresion/tuplet-nest.ly), where do I find those examples, how do I call
> them?

Firstable, I don't know if you're reading the documentation in PDF or
in online browsable HTML. You'd better browse the HTML version, which
is far more convenient and has many extra hypertext features.
Look, for instance, at
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.10/Documentation/
you'll see every documentation resources you may need. The Program
Reference (the link is in the right column) is, however, a rather
advanced piece, which you probably won't require before a while.

As LilyPond is free software, everyone can contribute to its
developement and therefore, the documentation is half user- , half
developer-oriented.
For a standard human being like you and me (i.e. non a
martian-god-coder-whatever...), the Tutorial (which has recently been
rewritten by Graham Percival) and the User Manual are good places to
start.

There are, as far as I know, three kinds of examples in LilyPond documentation.

The first kind is the short (simple) examples you can find in the
Tutorial or the Manual. They come as small PNG images, which you can
click on; if you do, you'll see the exact .ly input file which has
been used to produce this example. Those examples are easily pastable
in your own LilyPond files, to see how it works.

The second kind is the link "examples" on the page I just mentioned.
These are full samples, beautiful scores by  "real" composers, just to
show you what LilyPond can produce.

The last kind are the "examples" or "example files" links in the
manual. These are the examples you were talking about. As a matter of
fact, these pages are "regression tests", which give the coders the
ability to check if LilyPond new versions are compatible with each
features of the previous ones. You can, of course, click on the links
but be aware that you're typically going in some developer-oriented
area...


> Lasatly, how do you invoke the midi 2 ly command. I read the manual but am
> unsure. Do I include the 3 dots? Will there be a new file? Where will I find
> it?

You didn't mention which OS you're running. If you are on Windows,
first install python :
http://www.python.org/download/

Then open a command line with
"Start button">run>"cmd"

If your file, say, test.mid is in Program Files\Lilypond\usr\bin
then do

cd "Program Files\Lilypond\usr\bin"
python midi2ly.py test.mid

If your file is on the Desktop, (the last time I tried on Windows,
this is the only way I could do that: )

cd \
cd "Program Files\Lilypond\usr\bin"
python midi2ly.py "C:\Documents and
Settings\Your Name\Desktop\test.mid"

-and then

move test.ly "C:\Documents and Settings\Your Name\Desktop"

There should be some simpler way, but there seems to be a problem with
the PATH variable on Windows.

> Thanks in advance!!

You're welcome :)
Next time, don't forget to mention which OS you're running...

Valentin

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