Re: Article in German LinuxUser magazine

[Alexander Kobel]

Jan Nieuwenhuizen wrote:
> Op maandag 21-09-2009 om 22:47 uur [tijdzone +0200], schreef Alexander
> Kobel:
>
> > Spätestens beim Schlusswort des Autors befiel mich jedoch das kalte
> > Grausen ob der Recherche: "wenn [...] Sie einzelne Stimmen
> > transponieren wollen, ist hier Neuschreiben angesagt[.]"  Mitnichten!
> > \transpose c d etwa verlegt den folgenden Ausdruck einen Ganzton nach
> > oben.
>
> Rereading the article, I believe the author says
>
>   * frescobaldi + LilyPond looks professional, but
>   * writing .ly is not for everyone and
>   * frescobaldi does not offer transposing or quoting with
>     the mouse
>
> So, pointing to \transpose is fine, but that does not help the
> gui-only user...

Actually, I think he's right in those basics. It _looks_ professional, 
and writing .ly probably _is_ not for everyone, but that's no excuse for 
poor investigation or writing about it.
IMHO, it's nearly the same thing for LaTeX and LilyPond. I'd never 
bother to run LaTeX for a letter to Aunt Elsbeth, but as soon as you do 
larger projects, it starts to be worth the practising of the syntax. 
_Nearly_ the same thing, because I found LilyPond to be quicker even for 
the most basic musical works, but also this does probably not apply if 
you just want to type the chorals for your church wedding once in life.

To be fair, regarding \transpose: I did not consider that he may have 
written only about language features actually offered by Frescobaldi - 
which may not be too bad at the first glance. On the other hand, I just 
recognised there is a menu option to switch to german note input (which, 
by the way, correctly includes "deutsch.ly", not "german.ly")...


Cheers,
Alexander