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Re: Extent of graphic or text interface with LilyPond.
From: |
GoochRules! |
Subject: |
Re: Extent of graphic or text interface with LilyPond. |
Date: |
Wed, 7 Apr 2004 16:37:07 -0600 |
On Apr 7, 2004, at 4:06 PM, Michael Edwards wrote:
My thanks to those who have given me information about LilyPond.
Perhaps I just need to clarify one thing. Several people have
told me that
LilyPond doesn't have a graphic user interface - which I had read on
the web
site anyway.
I said that I didn't like graphic user interfaces much anyway,
but I'm
beginning to wonder if I didn't word this statement clearly enough,
and whether
it is being misunderstood a little. With all the talk about input
being
entirely ASCII text, and having to understand a language, I'm almost
(maybe not
quite - but almost) getting the impression that LilyPond doesn't
display the
music on the screen at all, and that you read the music by reading the
text
you've input, and understanding what notation it is specifying.
Technically, this is true, lilypond does not display the music as
music. In fact, lilypond does not display anything at all other than
processing information. What lilypond does do is compile the source to
another format suitable for display (e.g., PDF or MIDI) by another
program.
Maybe I've misunderstood the comments I've received in response.
I don't really know that I want a program where I have to work in
such an
abstract way, where I can't see the actual musical notation on screen
- and when
I said I didn't like graphical user interfaces, I didn't mean that I
liked this
way of working; I just meant that I dislike the Macintosh/Windows
style of
program design, where every function is represented by silly childish
little
pictures instead of a brief, clear text description, and where you
have to point
and click to do everything, rather than use the keyboard (as if users
were
expected mainly to be only semi-literate).
But (of course - perhaps it seems obvious) I *do* want the music
to be
displayed on the screen, and to be able to directly work on elements of
notation: moving them around, changing them, and so on, right before
my eyes. I
just want to be able to do this mostly (if not entirely) by using the
keyboard,
and not by having to use the mouse hundreds of times an hour. For
example, I
want to be able to move to the next note by pressing "Right-Arrow",
and the next
bar by pressing "Shift Right-Arrow", and to the next system by
pressing "Ctrl
Right-Arrow" and the next page by pressing "Alt Right-Arrow" - or
something of
that sort - instead of having to use the mouse to do each of these
moves.
(That's only a guess, of course, about the way the keys might work.
But you get
the idea.)
If your text editor can understand what 'next note' and 'next bar' and
'next system' mean in terms of lilypond source, than yes, you can do
this.
(I once nearly wrecked my right wrist years ago when (obviously
having
nothing better to do at the time) I obsessively played a Monopoly game
for
several weeks, often hours at a time. It was an MS-DOS program, but
it looked
very like a Windows program, and was designed to be operated almost
exclusively
with the mouse - a perfect model of appallingly, unbelievably *bad*
program
design, in my opinion, and one that has been far too often emulated in
Windows
software. Fortunately I recovered fully after I ceased using that
program. But
it put me off the mouse for life, and it is one of the great computing
mysteries
of life to me why this cumbersome device has become so standard for
most
computing applications, instead of being the very specialized graphic
tool that
I would have thought it should be, in those few functions where it
would be well
suited (which I suppose would be selecting very small portions of a
graphic
picture on the screen, and not having to do that too often).)
I have nothing against learning a language to work the program,
if that is
efficient. I am a Turbo Pascal programmer, and am familiar with the
main
concepts of programming languages. But dealing with such a visual
thing as
music notation *entirely* through a programming language does sound a
bit
cumbersome.
Then simply think of lilypond as a compiler (infact, you can even run
it as a filter that reads from stdin and writes compiled output to
stdout). .ly is your source file, and .pdf/.midi/etc is your compiled
output. I'd say the lilypond language (mudela?) is not cumbersome, but
rather, verbose. But I think that is simply a result of the medium
being worked with. I consider the language as a vectorization of
music, and therein lies the verbosity.
I would be grateful if someone could please clarify this point
for me. And
if the music notation is available for display, is it only in a
"Preview" mode,
such as you find in some MS-DOS-based word-processors, and you have to
exit that
mode to return to doing things?Or can you work directly on the
notation that
is displayed?
Only as much as one can with any compiled code, but with lilypond
debugging/previewing is a visual rather than logical exercise.
--mpeltzer