RE: Coexisting 2.8 with 2.4

[Fairchild]

Mats -

Thanks for your usual thoughtful response.

IMO, at 2.4 LilyPond achieved four stars.

Many have invested extensive effort in creating quality scores with various
versions.  To encourage upgrading there should be some automated mechanism
for upward compatibility, or earlier versions should be supported.

The string replacement capabilities in convert-ly are useful, but far from
adequate.

While added Lily features are welcome, many changes are effort-consuming to
convert with no apparent gain.  An trivial example: \markup { \column < {"A"
"B" } { "C" "D" } > }  has changed syntax and result.

See ** inserts below.

                         - Bruce

-----Original Message-----
From: Mats Bengtsson [mailto:address@hidden 
Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2006 7:21 AM
To: Fairchild
Cc: 'Thomas Scharkowski'; address@hidden
Subject: RE: Coexisting 2.8 with 2.4


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.

** Yes, but.  It would be polite to ask or inform, not change the PATH
surreptitiously.

>
> 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).

** Clicking an ly file should open in an editor of choice, not initiate
processing - my opinion.

** Not for the desktop shortcut icon - for ly files.  An icon was assigned.
Why change it?

> 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.

** Including the TeX fonts?

 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.

** Point-and-click and convenient preview from jEdit.

> 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