Re: Professional LilyPond users?

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

2007/11/1, Dominic Neumann <address@hidden>:
> The reason I use LaTeX is that I know LaTeX very well as a typesetting
> engine for mathematical documents and therefor I´m used to it. However
> LaTeX isn´t too comfortable for this, but it works. I´m very
> interested in trying ConTeXt -- I hope, I´ll find the time to have a
> try.

see http://wiki.contextgarden.net (/LilyPond)

ConTeXt can do everything what LaTeX does WRT math. It just uses a
completely different layout approach - you don't use document classes
but define your layout yourself. Most features that are in usual LaTeX
packages are in ConTeXt's core, and some more in additional modules.
So the interface is much more coherent.
But of course ConTeXt is a moving target (at least WRT newest
features) and lacks printed documentation. At the moment the big move
to LuaTeX binds most of the core developers' time.

> The main strength of using a system like LaTeX compared to a DTP
> software is that one can write scripts to manage the whole creation
> process. I didn´t want to do this with InDesign or something like
> that.

You can also control ID or QXP with scripts, there are several
possibilities, on OSX I use Python with the appscript module (Apple
Events) to remote control ID; on WinXP I used Python with win32com
(COM API); for an other workflow I create text files with ID tags or
XML files and import those into ID. You can do similar stuff with QXP
(XPress tags, perhaps also XML).

Sorry, it gets more and more OT here... ;-)

> Do you know if there is a way to get PDF/X3-compatible files out of
> ConTeXt? With LaTeX, I didn´t manage this. [PDF/X3 is a standard for
> PDF files needed in pre-press.]

We should discuss such on TeX-D-L or NTG-Context.
AFAIK that's not a (mis)feature of LaTeX or ConTeXt, but of pdfTeX.
You can convert a TeX PDF into PDF/X with Acrobat Pro, though. Perhaps
it's possible to include the ICC profiles and additional information
with some pdfTeX primitives, but AFAIK nobody yet managed to create a
standards compliant PDF/X-3 yet. In fact, you seldom need one, because
songbooks are normally black&white...

Greetlings, Hraban