Re: commands list and syntax

[Graham Percival]

hernan gonzalez wrote:

> Ok. i'll see... but I must understand first, document later ;-)
> It's really strange for me that the syntax of \score , for example, is 
> never
> stated (as far as i found)...

Start at 3.2 How LilyPond files work.  Read that section, then follow 
the links from that page to other related sections.

> Well, I'm still reading and grasping the concepts... I was trying
> (still am) to understand how does the parsing (informally) work, which
> are the delimiters so to speak; clearly, newlines are not. if I write:
> ...
> xxx = {a b c}  \markup "hi"
> ...
>
> xxx is obviously (obviously?) assigned to {a b c} , the \markup is
> independet of it, and could have been in other line.

Yes.

> About the "macro/identifier/variable" concept:  I meant: this does not work
>
> %%
> xx= \italic
> \score {  {   a^\markup { \xx hi } } }
> %%
> in spite of this being ok:
> %%
> \score { { a^\markup{ \italic hi } } }
> %%
>
> This shows (i assume) that the assigment of a identifier si not a
> static sustitution as (a textual macro, a C #define). I'd like to
> understand better what it is... Another example:

I recommend that you look at
2.3.1 Music expressions explained
in the documentation for version 2.11.


> %--- this is ok ---
> \book {
> \score { {a b} \midi{} }
> \score { {c d} \layout{} }
> }
> % -- this is ok, equivalent to previous
> scoreA = \score { {a b} \midi{} }
> scoreB = \score { {c d} \layout{} }
> \book {
>   \score { \scoreA }
>   \score { \scoreB }
> }
>
> But if one think the identifiers as "having" the text at the right,
> one would find a duplication of \score commands; the following would
> appear to be the real equivalents of the original:
>
> %--- not valid
> scoreA = \score { {a b} \midi{} }
> scoreB = \score { {c d} \layout{} }
> \book {
>   \scoreA
>   \scoreB
> }
> % -- not valid, neither
> scoreA = { {a b} \midi{} }
> scoreB = { {c d} \layout{} }
> \book {
>   \score { \scoreA }
>   \score { \scoreB }
> }
>
>
> hope i'm not being too dense .-) just, it's just i'm trying to
> understand better how everything works.

One possible confusion is that LilyPond tries to be nice: if you omit 
certain keywords (or implicitly duplicate them via an identifier), it 
still displays some output.

10.1 Input files
has some more details about this process.

Cheers,
- Graham