RE: Coexisting 2.8 with 2.4

[Mats Bengtsson]

Quoting Fairchild <address@hidden>:

> Thomas, et. al. -
>
> Successfully installed 2.8.5-1.  Some findings and questions:
>
> 1)  2.8 adds to the PATH at installation - doesn't seem necessary.

Maybe not if you only access it via jEdit, but it's certainly
very convenient if you want to call LilyPond from a command prompt.
Not to mention if you want to use midi2ly or convert-ly or any of the 
other programs that you can't reach via any menu or double-clicking.
> 2)  2.8 changes the ly file association and icon - annoying.

The file association and icon (which you can drag your .ly files
to) is very convenient for the 99% of LilyPond users who don't
want to have multiple versions installed at the same time (or maybe I 
missed what you found annoying).

> 3)  How to get the 2.4 default font in 2.8?

In 2.4, the only(!?) available fonts were the TeX fonts. In 2.8, you 
have access to all the fonts that are available
in your other windows programs. However, I'm not sure how to install 
the TeX fonts, so that
they are found via the "Pango library" that LilyPond now uses.
The question has popped up a number of times on the mailing list, but 
it seems that nobody has managed to do it, even though I'm sure
it's fully possible if you know how it works.

> 4)  Trying to set up a second jEdit doesn't seem possible.  Don't try it
> naively - the result is confusing to unwind.
>
> 5)  Don't find a flavor switch in LilyTool 0.2.8.  Haven't upgraded to
> 0.2.9.
>
> 6)  Thanks for the suggestion to use the command line - awkward but
> tolerable - it works sometimes - sometimes Lily crashes - haven't nailed a
> discriminator.
>
> 7)  What's a correct command line to get dvi?  Using " . . .
> usr/bin/lilypond-windows.exe -b=tex --dvi test" finds an error in init.ly.

The TEX and DVI back-ends are more or less unsupported. Why would you
want the DVI.

> 8)  Why the move to 'native' from cygwin?  What is gained?  Seems
> development talent would be more productive sweeping jEdit cobwebs.

The reason was that it was too complicated to make the cygwin version
work. The cygwin maintainer gave up and nobody else volounteered to 
take over. Also, it seems that it's very easy for Han-Wen and Jan
to produce the new native package together with all the other versions
as soon as they release a new version.

Please search the mailing list archives for more details on all these
questions. Most of them actually relate to what happened at version 2.6.


  /Mats