Fw: PDF Viewing / Updating a score

[Trent Johnston]

Hello everyone,

 

Firstly the required out the way:

 

Platform: Windows XP

Lilypond Version: 2.7.8

 

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I have been using the new version(s) of Lilypond for a while and I find the us of PDF file a little annoying especially when fine tuning a score. You have to remember to close out of the current document before you run lilypond as the current scheme is to delete the old pdf and make the new one. So if you fail to close the score your viewing in the PDF viewer before you compile you receive an error message which means going through the sequence again remembering this time to close the document in the pdf viewer.

 

While this is only a minor quible it becomes more noticeable when editing a large score i.e. across many pages. To make a simple adjustment say the padding of slur or dynamic this becomes frustrating as you need to close down the pdf file, make the adjustment and then manually load newly generated pdf back into the pdf viewer and then try and find the page and staff to where you made the adjustment. This can be very annoying and slow down the work rate especially when you are making guesses to padding / layout / making lyric corrections etc.

 

I know in the older versions of lilypond a dvi viewer could be used as a fast an easy way to make changes. Since the newer versions only produce a .ps file and .pdf file this it out of the question. I tried using 'gsview' with the .ps file but gsview complains that there too many errors and won't display the music. I use gsview all the time especially when entering music with PMX/Musixtex and can have the .ps loaded all the time and when I update the score it refreshes the screen with the changes made while retaining the same view of the same page I was working on. This makes fine tuning scores much simplier and time efficient.

 

Is there a way to use the .ps file with gsview I know I won't be able to use point and click but since I usually number all the bars in a score I don't see this as problem and if things get a little tricky I can always go back to the pdf score to find the offending line. I don't use point and click as it is but simply use the pointer to give me the line number to go back to file to find.

 

Any hints / help appreciated.

 

Regards,

 

Trent