Re: Skip to Specific Bar

[James Harkins]

Kieren MacMillan <kieren_macmillan <at> sympatico.ca> writes:

> > can I ask what the \global tag is doing in your snippet? It seems
> > to me like it's laying out a map of the time signature change in a piece. 
Is
> > this the recommended way to go about this? Up till now I've just written 
all
> > the time changes into the first staff as I put the notes in. 
> 
> I don't know about "recommended", but I certainly prefer laying out the code 
that way.
> 
> My 'global' variable tends to have all score-level items: time signature 
changes (if score-level), key
> signature changes (if score-level), and marks (e.g. MetronomeMark, 
RehearsalMark), and so on.

To explain the concrete benefit a little more:

If you're making only a score, it doesn't matter.

If you need to make parts, a \global variable will save you from having to 
extract time signatures and rehearsal marks from the first part. These "score-
level" marks do NOT automatically transfer from the music expression for staff 
1 into the music expressions for other staves when laying out parts (where the 
music expression for staff 1 is not present).

Lilypond has a different philosophy from other notation packages. You don't 
extract parts from a score. You write the parts as components -- variables -- 
and then lay out the variables into whatever formats are required. A score's 
music expression creates several staves and fills them with content defined in 
variables. A part creates (usually) a single staff and fills it with the 
variables relevant to that part -- omitting variables for other parts.

Anything that needs to be shared across multiple parts should go in a separate 
variable, or group of variables.

hjh