Re: Other programming languages & LilyPond

[David Kastrup]

Joseph Rushton Wakeling <address@hidden> writes:

> On 02/12/13 22:20, David Kastrup wrote:
>> Scheme _is_ its scripting language.
>
> How much scope is there for creating a stable "scripting API" which
> could be used via Scheme (default) or any arbitrary language of
> choice, so long as someone writes bindings for that language?
>
> I ask because in our earlier discussion about tweaking, we discussed
> how large numbers of tweaks render a score effectively tied to a given
> version of Lilypond.  But if there can be a promise, "This scripting
> API will be future-proof," then maybe that kind of impact can be
> reduced, and a side benefit would be the potential to script with
> languages other than Scheme.

The "scripting API" are basically the music expressions.  The same music
expressions have pretty much continued to work unchanged or at least
upwards-compatible for a long time.  Something like issue 2240 changed
how input got translated into music expressions, but it did not change
the manner in which preexisting music expressions get interpreted.  That
has remained quite stable.

> Obviously any such API would cover only a subset of the possible
> tweaks to Lilypond, but that'd be effectively the point, separating
> tweaking into "safe" and "unsafe" things to mess around with.

Most tweaks also have retained their meaning (as translated into a music
expression) perfectly well.  But LilyPond's typesetting itself has
changed, and opposed to tweaking things like color or notehead styles,
tweaks that receive coordinates or offsets usually are based on a
particular behavior of some version of LilyPond.

-- 
David Kastrup