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Re: Choral lyrics assistance, please.


From: Nicholas WASTELL
Subject: Re: Choral lyrics assistance, please.
Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 11:51:02 +0100

On Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:59:17 +0100
Mats Bengtsson <address@hidden> wrote:

>  ... there's no need to use 
> \book here. If you just remove the "\book {" and matching "}", you will 
> get exactly the same result. If there's any information left in the 
> current manual that indicates that you need to explicitly specify the 
> \book command, please tell us, so we can clarify this issue
> even further.

This was the route I took through the docs, once I had thought about using two 
separate scores to achieve what I wanted.
Docs versions 2.11.37 (but a quick check shows that they are the same in .38).

LM 3.1.1 : "The \book command allows several \score blocks to be combined into 
one output." and then a link to NR 3.1.3.

By this time (as others have said on the list) I was looking for 'how-to', 
rather than 'if necessary'.  However, consider also:

LM 3.3.2 : "There can be only one top level context: the Score context. This is 
created with the \score command, or, in simple scores, it is created 
automatically."

So, the use of \book seemed to be the way to have two \score in one file.  I 
agree that NR 3.1.3 says quite clearly that \book is not necessary, but I 
didn't stay there very long. ;-)  The next step was to search LSR for '\book' 
(still looking for usage examples, rather than if it was necessary) and I found 
id=300, with example code for using \book.  I tried it and it worked, after 
some juggling with \paper.  I have to confess that I didn't search the list for 
\book because it was working by now.  If I had searched, I would have found 
that it wasn't necessary (I think that you have posted to two different 
questions just in the last couple of weeks -- sorry!) 

With this kind of forensic analysis, it's easy to see the silly mistakes and 
assumptions that I made.  I try to be reasonably diligent in researching as 
much as possible (hey, I'm the guy that never switches _anything_ on until I 
have read the instruction book!) but I could have done better, perhaps.  I'm 
not sure that I would ever have arrived at the solution offered by Trevor -- 
I'm not entirely clear why concurrent lyrics cannot be placed immediately after 
the Voice with which they are associated.  However, I will bank that experience 
now that I have met it.

More generally, I have found the tolerance of LilyPond with simple input, to be 
a two-edged sword.  It can be very useful for ease of entry and to get started 
with producing fantastic output, but it has lured me into a coding style which 
is not very robust for more complicated stuff.  After starting off using braces 
and angle-brackets very diligently, I found that many of them were not 
necessary, so they fell by the way.  Studying .ly output from NoteEdit, Canorus 
and LilyPondTool also led me to make assumptions when I should not have done, I 
think.

Anyway, I'm not sure that there is any immediate document change to be made -- 
just put it down to newbie errors!  The existing documentation for LilyPond is 
undoubtedly the best I have found for any FOSS software.  Just don't expect to 
make it newbie-proof!


Best regards,

Nick.
-- 
Nicholas WASTELL
France




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