Re: Using Lilypond as a Lilypond preprocessor.

[Erik Sandberg]

Citerar Darius Blasband <address@hidden>:

> Hi,
> 
> I think it might be a good idea for Lilypond to provide a facility 
> which, based on an input file, provides
> a normalized intermediate file which is itself a valid Lilypond file, 
> with exactly the same semantics as the
> original one, but where the variables (or at least, the user-define 
> ones) are expanded, all pitches and
> note durations are set to their absolute value, etc...
> 
> This file would definitely not be meant to be edited, but would be used 
> for further processings. Since it is
> much simpler than a plain Lilypond file, reading it would be much 
> simpler. Since all pitches and note
> durations are set explicitly, there is no room for misunderstanding.
> 
> For instance one might consider rewriting the MIDI generator based on 
> this intermediate file
> (and allow for the current implementation to be phased out, as no one 
> wants to work at it, and
> as it seems to deal with excessively complex data structures), or a 
> Midge generator, or a MusicXML
> export, or even a Finale Export (ok, ok, just kidding... :-) )
> 
> Since this intermediate file is a valid Lilypond file, an intermediate 
> pass can perform some kind of transformation
> on it before passing it back to Lilypond for actual processing.
> 
> Is this reasonable ? or is Lilypond's internal data structure too 
> complex for this to be feasible ?

Something similar to this is on our todo. The hope is that we will have
something working before summer.

Erik