transposing etc

[Bill Mooney]

Greetings,
Having spent some considerable time reading the various manuals, and 
applying the information gleaned therefrom to the choir ensemble 
template in order to enable transposing to suit the wants of a 'client', 
I would like feedback on the way I have achieved the required result.
The first, probably naive, attempt was to simply 'wrap' the entire 
template with " \transpose 'from' 'to' { the template } " which gave a 
variety of error messages, possibly because I might have incorrectly 
positioned a " } " or " { ", or something...!
Subsequent trial and error, following the examples provided in the 
Notation Reference, eventually lead to the following 'arrangement' -
the ' \key ' entry is moved from the 'global' definition to each of the 
partMusic definitions
the ' \transpose ' entry is added to each ' \new voice ' immediately 
before the  ' \partMusic ' in the \score section.
(I hope this is clear enough)
It seems necessary to do it this way as Lilypond seems to follow a 
process method where a later instruction overrides an earlier one - I 
think?!?
Firstly, is the ensemble template appropriate if one wishes to enable 
subsequent transposing?
Secondly, is the method I've outline above the best way to do it?

As an aside - could readers comment on how they arrange their workflow 
when transcribing scores from hand written originals (which is what I am 
cureently doing) - do you enter all the notes first to check the 
accuracy of note entry, then add articulations, markups etc later, or do 
you enter each note with its ties, slurs, markups, etc as you proceed 
through the piece? Any comments would be gratefully received.
Many thanks
Bill
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