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Re: How to start Lilypond


From: Mats Bengtsson
Subject: Re: How to start Lilypond
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 08:49:52 +0100
User-agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 (X11/20070221)

The simplest way for a newbie to start editing a new LilyPond file in Windows, is simply to double-click on the LilyPond icon on the Desktop. This will start
a simple text editor (similar to Notepad) which has no problems with the
.ly file extension. This is also the editor that's started if you right-click on
a .ly file and select "Edit".

Of course, there are much better editors available, for example
http://lilypondtool.organum.hu/

  /Mats

Bonnie Rogers wrote:
Francisco Vila wrote:
El lun, 19 de mar de 2007, a las 01:33:45 +0100, Francisco Vila dijo:


Really you can simply open notepad and save the document as
whatever.ly and it will keep its given filename extension, so it
should work as a lilypond file.


Not true unless you have experience managing Notepad. When you save the Lilypond test file in Notepad, you must not only type the filename "test.ly" but also change the "Save as type" to "All Files". Otherwise the result will indeed be "test.ly.txt".

Similarly, when you go to open an existing Lilypond file to edit in Notepad, you must take care to change the "Files of type" to "All Files." Otherwise you won't see the complete file list, and Notepad won't be able to find the Lilypond file.

In Notepad, you have to reset the file type to "All Files" each time you open a new Lilypond file, even if you saved another Lilypond file immediately before in the same working session. And Notepad lets you have only one file open at a time, so you can't easily compare files or copy from file to file.

Because of this lack of flexibility, I don't think most Windows Lilypond users would choose Notepad, even though it can be made to work. There are lots of other editors for Windows, most of them free downloads. Windows newbies who don't have an established preference should check out

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_text_editors>

It would be nice if LilyPond, besides its context menu entry "generate
PDF..." would also add a "new->lilypond text file" entry in the
right-click mouse menu. This would simplify things a lot, I think.


To me it seems simpler just to open the file in the text editor of my choice. There's lots of typing to be done before the file will be ready to run through Lilypond. And I want to be free to try different editors and decide for myself which one I like best. Based on previous discussions in this list, there is no one clear choice that suits everybody.



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--
=============================================
        Mats Bengtsson
        Signal Processing
        Signals, Sensors and Systems
        Royal Institute of Technology
        SE-100 44  STOCKHOLM
        Sweden
        Phone: (+46) 8 790 8463                         
       Fax:   (+46) 8 790 7260
        Email: address@hidden
        WWW: http://www.s3.kth.se/~mabe
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