Re: promoting LilyPond

[David Kastrup]

Johan Vromans <address@hidden> writes:

> "Trevor Daniels" <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> A real example using a template which
>> provides an SATB choir on two staves with lyrics between them and
>> a piano staff with accompaniment is attached.
>
> I've been using a similar approach for SLHML choir, with a skeleton
> template (attached). I haven't been able to add this to LSR since it's
> not a snippet file, but a package of associated files.
>
>> A nice feature is that any context left without input is not printed,
>> so the same template could be used for SA and piano, just piano, a
>> variable number of verses, etc.
>
> Exactly.
>
>> \use SA-TB-B-template
>
> An important 'feature' of the hypothetical \use (as opposed to \include)
> would be that it can do things in the beginning (e.g., settings), and at
> the end (e.g., handle the \score part(s)).

Well, actually \include can be made to do that perfectly well since the
\score parts are handled by hooks.  But there is no nice user interface.

The LaTeX distinction between class and package makes another point:
there must always be exactly one document class, but you can have an
arbitrary number of packages since those are providing features, not a
layout.  With LilyPond, the "exactly one" relation for document classes
would not really hold: basically we have one per \score block.

I'm not saying that we should copy the nomenclature, but differentiating
between something providing a layout (or rather, all relevant output
blocks) and something providing functionality makes sense.

-- 
David Kastrup