Re: Score parts: instrument and duration

[Erik Sandberg]

On Tuesday 16 August 2005 11.54, Hans Aberg wrote:
> On 16 Aug 2005, at 10:03, Mats Bengtsson wrote:
> >> I figure so. But I do not know the worth of the effort of
> >> pursuing  it. One can perhaps draw a parallel to the TeX macro
> >> package LaTeX,  which in its original form was too rigid for
> >> general use, and too  difficult to reprogram; therefore, in part
> >> for such reasons, the  LaTeX3 project was created.
> >
> > I would rather view LaTeX as a great success and I have to admit I
> > haven't seen any useful output of the LaTeX3 project, but that's off
> > topic.
>
> I think it might have some relevance in the context of making
> LilyPond more easily accessible. The original LaTeX wasn't used by
> mathematicians, for example. As for LaTeX3, the development team only
> came to LaTeX2 :-), which solved many of the problems or original
> LaTeX. When LaTeX3 started to come up for development, another
> question started to become more important, namely finding a suitable
> TeX successor.
>
> LilyPond is more specific in focus, but might undergo similar
> developments. First, implementation efforts to make things work,
> combined with a series of packages, making it easier to use. Finally,
> that experience may result in a LilyPond successor (which might be
> named LilyPond, if the development team is still around).

The comparison between TeX/LaTeX and Lilypond is not completely relevant. 
Lilypond uses a different development model. You can see the current lilypond 
as a less generic TeX, with most of LaTeX's functionality hardcoded into it. 
Lily is gradually refactoring so that more and more of the hardcoded stuff 
can get softcoded. In this process, we sometimes sacrifice backward 
compatibility (which some of our users rightfully dislike). One possible 
effect of this, could be that lilypond gradually turns into a "TeX2", instead 
of needing to be rewritten.

Erik