Hi, Someone on IRC told me about a quite important lack in lilypond. A file compiled with an older version CANNOT be compiled on a newer version.
Well, you might want to tell me "just use the convert-ly script". The result of that script is generally not satisfacting and often needs much hand code reformatting. Personnally, I didn't really experienced that problem, but when I think that this is an important lack in a program. Take a look at LaTeX. Using the current versions, we can easily build a 20-years old file. With lilypond, we need to rewrite it in order to compile a 6-year old file. There are some ideas I could propose you: -- Update the convert-ly script (not the best solution, since you would need to do that at each version). -- Correct the thing on lilypond, to make sure that old files can still be build. -- As LaTeX did, "freeze" the lilypond's syntax to make sure that is won't change, and be compatible. I cannot really help you with that, since I'm not a pretty advanced programmer. (I probably look like whining... sorry about that ;-). Here is the little (french) memo that I recived, that motivated me to write this: "-MemoServ- IMPORTANT : envoyer un message sur mailing-list des développeurs à propos de convert-ly : impossible de convertir des vieux fichiers, exemple http://www.mutopiaproject.org/ftp/SatieE/gymnopedie_2/gymnopedie_2.ly Si les fichiers lilypond ne sont pas pérennes, lilypond ne vaut guère mieux que des logiciels propriétaires... " Translation: "IMPORTANt : please send a message on dev's mailling-lists about convert-ly: it is impossible to convert old files, as propos de convert-ly : impossible de convertir des vieux fichiers, exemple http://www.mutopiaproject.org/ftp/SatieE/gymnopedie_2/gymnopedie_2.ly . If the lilypond files are not perennial (old files useable on new versions), lilypond is not better than those propertary (closed-source) software." I DID NOT write this, I just recived it, and sent it to you. Do what you want with that, but it would be really useful/nice/cool to consider it. Cheers Simon Plante admin of http://lilypondwiki.tuxfamily.org founder of the lilypond's IRC channel, [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ lilypond-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-devel
