RE: lilypond-windows and -dgui

[James Lowe]

Phil.
________________________________________
From: address@hidden address@hidden on behalf of Phil Holmes address@hidden
Sent: 02 July 2011 17:28
To: address@hidden
Subject: lilypond-windows and -dgui

I've written a couple of applications for windows that use lilypond - the
first runs lilypond from a small GUI application and displays the output in
a window on the form (LilyPond monitor).  The second is my regtest pixel
comparator.  In both cases it took me quite a long time to find out how
(using C# .Net) to capture the output from lilypond.  In the end I got it
working for my monitor, but I've never been able to get it working for the
regtest comparator, because it runs 4 threads with a lilypond invocation in
each, and I think the output stream the .Net captures is a single one for
the whole machine, so the output from each thread is interleaved.

Anyway, in an idle moment I remembered that there a 2 exes in the \bin
directory - lilypond.exe and lilypond-windows.exe, and I'd never been able
to work out what each actually does.  I thought one might be able to make
the "grab the output" exercise easier, and so I've been experimenting.

By default, lilypond.exe (when run from the command line) creates a PDF and
sends all output to the cmd window.  lilypond-windows.exe runs completely
silently (the prompt returns immediately) and all you get is the output
file - the PDF.  However, if you run lilypond.exe -dgui file.ly, all you get
in the command window is the version number - the output goes to file.log -
without the version statement.  If you run lilypond-windows.exe -dgui
file.ly then there is no screen output and you get the same logfile as
before.

I only found the -dgui by googling for lilypond-windows.exe (although I do
remember this option being mentioned to me on one of the lists).  Could we
get it (and also the function of lilypond-windows.exe) documented - the
usage manual would seem the best option?

------

If you can get something rough up on a tracker (I haven't yet gone through my 
Bug list emails so if you have done this I apologise) and I can perhaps do that 
for you.

I've only got a few hours today and tomorrow eve, and then I'm 'out' until 
Tuesday, but after that I'll be about as normal.

james