Re: Lilypond 2.16 and 2.18 incompatibility for \relative without absolutenote outside the score

[Trevor Daniels]

Mark Veltzer wrote Tuesday, November 04, 2014 3:15 PM

> Just moved to ubuntu 14.10 (utopic) and got lilypond 2.18.2 instead of
> 2.16.2 that was installed on ubuntu 14.04 (trusty). This broke all of my
> tunes (I have about 150 of them since I do a big lilypond project).
> 
> The problem: \score { << \new Voice="foo" \relative { c d e f g } >> }
> 
> produces different outputs in the two versions. because I do not specify an
> absolute note in the '\relative' syntax the first note inside the score is
> supposed to be taken as absolute and therefore it is supposed to be middle c.
> In lilypond 2.16 this is the case.
> In lilypond 2.18 this is not the case. The first c in this example is drawn
> as the c below middle c. I really don't know why.

c is actually the note an octave below middle C.  c' is middle C.  As others
have noted, convert-ly should help with the conversion.

I'm sorry this has caused you grief, but, in our defence, the following has been
in the section on \relative in the Notation Reference in every release of 
LilyPond
since release 2.11.35 in 2007:

"If no startpitch is specified for \relative, then c' is assumed. However, this 
is a deprecated option and may disappear in future versions, so its use is 
discouraged."

Trevor