Re: Extent of graphic or text interface with LilyPond.

[GoochRules!]

On Apr 7, 2004, at 4:06 PM, Michael Edwards wrote:

>      My thanks to those who have given me information about LilyPond.
>
>      Perhaps I just need to clarify one thing.  Several people have 
> told me that
> LilyPond doesn't have a graphic user interface - which I had read on 
> the web
> site anyway.
>      I said that I didn't like graphic user interfaces much anyway, 
> but I'm
> beginning to wonder if I didn't word this statement clearly enough, 
> and whether
> it is being misunderstood a little.  With all the talk about input 
> being
> entirely ASCII text, and having to understand a language, I'm almost 
> (maybe not
> quite - but almost) getting the impression that LilyPond doesn't 
> display the
> music on the screen at all, and that you read the music by reading the 
> text
> you've input, and understanding what notation it is specifying.

Technically, this is true, lilypond does not display the music as 
music.  In fact, lilypond does not display anything at all other than 
processing information.  What lilypond does do is compile the source to 
another format suitable for display (e.g., PDF or MIDI) by another 
program.

>      Maybe I've misunderstood the comments I've received in response.
>      I don't really know that I want a program where I have to work in 
> such an
> abstract way, where I can't see the actual musical notation on screen 
> - and when
> I said I didn't like graphical user interfaces, I didn't mean that I 
> liked this
> way of working; I just meant that I dislike the Macintosh/Windows 
> style of
> program design, where every function is represented by silly childish 
> little
> pictures instead of a brief, clear text description, and where you 
> have to point
> and click to do everything, rather than use the keyboard (as if users 
> were
> expected mainly to be only semi-literate).
>      But (of course - perhaps it seems obvious) I *do* want the music 
> to be
> displayed on the screen, and to be able to directly work on elements of
> notation: moving them around, changing them, and so on, right before 
> my eyes.  I
> just want to be able to do this mostly (if not entirely) by using the 
> keyboard,
> and not by having to use the mouse hundreds of times an hour.  For 
> example, I
> want to be able to move to the next note by pressing "Right-Arrow", 
> and the next
> bar by pressing "Shift Right-Arrow", and to the next system by 
> pressing "Ctrl
> Right-Arrow" and the next page by pressing "Alt Right-Arrow" - or 
> something of
> that sort - instead of having to use the mouse to do each of these 
> moves.
> (That's only a guess, of course, about the way the keys might work.  
> But you get
> the idea.)

If your text editor can understand what 'next note' and 'next bar' and 
'next system' mean in terms of lilypond source, than yes, you can do 
this.

>      (I once nearly wrecked my right wrist years ago when (obviously 
> having
> nothing better to do at the time) I obsessively played a Monopoly game 
> for
> several weeks, often hours at a time.  It was an MS-DOS program, but 
> it looked
> very like a Windows program, and was designed to be operated almost 
> exclusively
> with the mouse - a perfect model of appallingly, unbelievably *bad* 
> program
> design, in my opinion, and one that has been far too often emulated in 
> Windows
> software.  Fortunately I recovered fully after I ceased using that 
> program.  But
> it put me off the mouse for life, and it is one of the great computing 
> mysteries
> of life to me why this cumbersome device has become so standard for 
> most
> computing applications, instead of being the very specialized graphic 
> tool that
> I would have thought it should be, in those few functions where it 
> would be well
> suited (which I suppose would be selecting very small portions of a 
> graphic
> picture on the screen, and not having to do that too often).)
>
>      I have nothing against learning a language to work the program, 
> if that is
> efficient.  I am a Turbo Pascal programmer, and am familiar with the 
> main
> concepts of programming languages.  But dealing with such a visual 
> thing as
> music notation *entirely* through a programming language does sound a 
> bit
> cumbersome.

Then simply think of lilypond as a compiler (infact, you can even run 
it as a filter that reads from stdin and writes compiled output to 
stdout).  .ly is your source file, and .pdf/.midi/etc is your compiled 
output.  I'd say the lilypond language (mudela?) is not cumbersome, but 
rather, verbose.  But I think that is simply a result of the medium 
being worked with.  I consider the language as a vectorization of 
music, and therein lies the verbosity.

>      I would be grateful if someone could please clarify this point 
> for me.  And
> if the music notation is available for display, is it only in a 
> "Preview" mode,
> such as you find in some MS-DOS-based word-processors, and you have to 
> exit that
> mode to return to doing things?Or can you work directly on the 
> notation that
> is displayed?

Only as much as one can with any compiled code, but with lilypond 
debugging/previewing is a visual rather than logical exercise.


--mpeltzer