Re: Backwards compatibility: \compressMusic, \scaleDurations, WHY WHY WHY

[Patrick McCarty]

On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 3:33 PM, Steve Dunlop <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> <rant>
>
> You have absolutely no idea how much chaos things like this cause for
> people who are using Lilypond for major projects.  You have absolutely
> no idea how much of a problem this sort of thing is for archives like
> Mutopia.  You have no idea how the lack of input grammar stability
> undermines efforts for wider adoption of Lilypond for projects like
> Gutenburg and Wikipedia.
>
> If you want to change the syntax, fine, add the new, update the
> documentation, but for heaven's sake leave the old syntax alone so that
> existing files will still compile.
>
> </rant>

This has been discussed numerous times on the mailing list.  Check the archives.

Handling syntax changes such as \compressMusic --> \scaleDurations are
easily handled by convert-ly, since there is no change in structure of
the input file.  Simply use the following command:

$ convert-ly -e oldfile.ly

and your file's \version declaration will be updated along with the syntax.

HTH,
Patrick