Re: producing "archival" scores

[Arvid Grøtting]

 <stk <at> alcor.concordia.ca> writes:

> I wonder what the typical   note-entry-time/layout-tweak-time   ratio is
> amongst LilyPond users.

I'm probably not average (who is?), but I guess I spend about 40% of the time
spent on a score on initial note entry, 30% on layout tweaking, 20% on
proofreading and 10% on other stuff.  But that's just a wild guess; I haven't
timed much of it.

Of course, I spend another bunch of time on improving my template and include
files, checking or posting to the mailing lists, narrowing down and reporting
bugs that I've stumbled upon, playing around with guile to make LilyPond produce
e.g. covers and once even improving functionality.

To return to the subject: I think .ly is a good format for archival purposes,
combined with the PDF.  You can probably find even quite old versions of
Lilypond -- and of an old enough OS environment if you need that -- many years
ahead, but if you really need the exact output you got from a version you used,
use the PDF.  When I re-use a lilypond file, it's usually either because I want
to correct a typo or ten, or because I want to take advantage of the improved
typesetting in a newer version.  Or both.

convert-ly does most of the conversion work, and most of what it doesn't convert
is either straightforward to retype in a newer version or redundant because of
improvements in the newer version.

Also, .ly files work brilliantly with revision control systems; I use CVS on all
my typesetting work, and while I could do that with an XML-based or a binary
format, a text format like .ly lets me view changes etc much more easily. 
(Plus, it takes up significantly less disk space.)

On another note, it looks to me like the base .ly format itself has stabilized a
lot recently, to the extent that I don't expect a 3.0 version under the current
version numbering regime /ever/.  But that's just my impression.  B-)

Cheers,

-- 

Arvid