Hi all,
I have a big engraving use case — I’m neck-deep in an example of it right now!
— and I’m hoping to do some brainstorming towards an optimal
structure/toolchain/workflow, so any thoughts are appreciated.
One of the things I do most often is compose for musical theatre. Because of
the way that particular industry works, there is a very large and complex set
of inputs and outputs. I’m hoping to refine my tools and process(es) to give me
the most flexible output options with the least effort and friction on the
input side.
There might be a large number of posts under this “rubric”, but I’ll keep it to
one question per thread.
So without further ado…
QUESTION #1:
Let’s say I have a song which appears identically in both the “Full Version”
and “Short Version” of the musical. The number of the song/cue within the show
might change, but it might not — for example, the opening number would likely
be #1 in both versions, but the finale could be #25 in the Full version and #17
in the Short Version. And furthermore, for this specific question, let’s say I
need to output one file per song (as opposed to a complete score containing the
whole show).
If I’d prefer not to involve make (or similar extra-Lilypond tools) in my
solution, is there any way to improve on simply having a single “top-level”
(score-generating) file structured as follows:
%% START FILE CONTENTS
\include [.ily files containing the notes, edition-engraver tweaks, etc.]
final_score =
<<
[contexts built from variables defined in \include-d files]
>>
\header {
[header parameters shared by both versions]
}
\book {
\bookOutputName "MySong_full"
\header {
[header parameters specific to the Full Version, e.g., song number]
}
\score { \final_score }
}
\book {
\bookOutputName "MySong_short"
\header {
[header parameters specific to the Short Version, e.g., song number]
}
\score { \final_score }
}
%% END FILE CONTENTS
Is there a more efficient construct where the book name and header variables
could be “injected” or “conditionalled” in? Or is that just overcomplicating
this particular problem-space? (n.b., In future questions, the problem-space is
naturally more complicated without any help from me!)
Thanks,
Kieren.
