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Re: What's the point of \book{...} ?


From: Han-Wen Nienhuys
Subject: Re: What's the point of \book{...} ?
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 15:32:24 +0200
User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2-6 (X11/20050513)

Mats Bengtsson wrote:
Hi,

I'm still very confused about the use of \book{...}.

- One motivation provided in the manual is to combine \score{...}
  and \markup{...} blocks, see "10.1.12 Multiple movements" and
  input/regression/score-text.ly. However, these examples work
  just as well without \book{...}, so that's not a reason to
  use \book.

- From trial and error, I have found that if you have several
  \book{...} in the same file, then each \book will result in
  a separate output file.

- From the mailing list, I have learned that if you use a \book{...}
  in a musical example in a lilypond-book/LaTeX document, then the
  full score will be typeset in a single .eps file instead of a
  separate .eps per score line. However, as has been pointed out,
  then the height of the typeset score has to be set (using what
  paper variable? textheight doesn't exist anymore!), otherwise
  the score will not fit on the page.

So, the only good reason to use \book that I have found is the
second item, namely to be able to get several output files from
the same .ly file, but maybe I have missed the point.

It seems that Graham is just as confused about this issue as
I am, so we would appreciate if Han-Wen or Jan could share their
insights.

\book mirrors the internal data structure Book, which stores multiple Score objects. As a short-cut, lilypond will collect all toplevel scores/compound music-expressions/text markups in a single \book. \book is necessary to create multiple parts (ie. multiple books), as you correctly point out.

Unless there is a serious bug, in a lilypond-book document each page of a \book is output as a lily-xxxx-1.eps, lily-xxxx-2.eps etc. sequence, as well as a single EPS file, whose height is as big as necessary. The latter is used for generating PNG images, the former is included into the TeX(info) document, so you can include fully laid out pages in a lilypond-book document (eg. for documenting page layout). The mechanism is exactly analogous to how systems for a \score are used.


--
 Han-Wen Nienhuys - address@hidden - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen




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