Re: Lilypond-book not working after installing Python 3

[Sven Siegmund]

I know that Python 3 and Python 2.x are two different worlds, and that
there are so many changes that must be done to the code that it would
mean to program lilypond-book again from scratch in Python 3, even
more if we consider that there is need to enhance its functionality
and make it work with xelatex or yet other TeX compilers.

I cannot really write complicated things in python. I learned only
Python 3 and do simple things in it. I have difficulties understanding
Python 2.x code, especially when it is practically uncommented like in
the case of lilypond-book source.

The only thing I can imagine to write myself is a python 3 script
which would be specialized to compiling xetex documents with lilypond
code in it. Something like a lilypond-book exclusively for xetex. The
script would just find all the lilypond snippets in the tex document,
compile them with lilypond, put the resulting pdfs instead and compile
with xelatex. But I will almost certainly never write such a tool
because the time spent with it would be much longer than time spent
doing the stuff manually. I just don't typeset text with musical
scores in them so often.

S.

On 26 February 2010 00:35, Joseph Wakeling <address@hidden> wrote:
> Sven Siegmund wrote:
>>> Uninstall python 3, as it can override library paths.
>>
>> But I really need Python 3. It is much more unicode-aware than Python
>> 2.x. Is there any hope that Lilypond-book will be ported to python 3?
>> Python 3 has been over a year around, so maybe it's time to adapt the
>> source code of lilypond-book a bit, isn't it? It would also be a great
>> opportunity to include an option for alternative TeX-compilers, e.g.
>> xelatex, not just pdflatex.
>
> You could try uninstalling both Python 3 and Lilypond, and reinstalling
> them both...
>
> Porting something to work with Python 3 is a non-trivial issue.  To give
> you an idea of the range of needs out there, my Linux distro makes
> available all versions of Python from 2.3 to 2.6 (the most recent 2.x
> release) as well as 3.0 and 3.1 -- in order to support various packages.
>  Conversely, a Python program that wants to be widely used has to work
> with a range of different Python releases, since not everyone has the
> latest Python available.  Porting to 3.x while still maintaining 2.x
> backwards compatibility is a bit of a load to carry when 2.x is still
> the most widespread Python out there.
>
> ... but you know that, if you're a Python dev -- so what's the chance
> that you could put some work into the port? :-)
>
> I'd also love to see xelatex compatibility, but don't have the faintest
> clue how to start working on that.
>