Re: Context creation

[James E. Bailey]

Am 02.06.2008 um 12:30 schrieb Mats Bengtsson:

> James E. Bailey wrote:
> > Am 02.06.2008 um 09:57 schrieb Valentin Villenave:
> >
> > > 2008/6/1 James E. Bailey <address@hidden>:
> > >
> > > > How coincidental. I've been wondering myself about the difference  
> > > > between
> > > > \new and \context. I kinda just use them interchangably and see  
> > > > if anything
> > > > new happens.
> > >
> > > The only difference AFAIK is that \context allows you to tap into an
> > > existing context:
> > >
> > > \new Staff = "coolStaff" " { (your music here) }
> > >
> > > and then later:
> > >
> > > \context Staff = "coolStaff" % look! the same context!
> > >                                  { (your other music here) }
> > >
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > Valentin
> >
> >
> > But couldn't you do that with coolStaff = { (my music here) }
> >
> > \context Staff = \coolStaff
> >
> > ?
> No, the point is that you can add contents to an existing context  
> "afterwards". A classical
> example is shown in the first SATB template in 
> http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.11/Documentation/user/lilypond-learning/Vocal-ensembles#Vocal-ensembles
> where you first create an empty Lyrics context and call in sopranos,  
> in order to place it above the
> staff and then fill it with its contents some lines later in the  
> \score block, in order to be able to
> use \lyricsto. (In this particular example, there's now an  
> alternative solution using aligned contexts,
> but before that property was introduced, the only possibility was to  
> use \context = "alreadydefinedcontext").
>
> Also, your code isn't syntactically correct. Did you mean
> \context Staff \coolStaff ?
>
>  /Mats
>
>   /Mats

Wait, I think I just larned something. If I understand \context is for  
referring to a context; whereas \new is for creating the context. So,  
if I understand correctly from the manual:
\new Lyrics = sopranos { s1 }
is the same as
\new Lyrics  \lyricsto sopranos \sopWords

Or did I totally miss that?

Oh, and that's why it has to have a name? So it can be referred back  
to later on.