Re: emacs lilypond-mode and the midi command

[Tim McNamara]

On Mar 7, 2009, at 4:05 AM, James E. Bailey wrote:

> On OSX, the lilypond mode for emacs doesn't properly escape filenames.
> open -a 'Mighty MIDI' /Users/jamesebailey/Documents/James Music/ 
> Choral Music/Windhauch/Windhauch.midi
> 2009-03-07 10:59:31.767 open[465] No such file: /Users/jamesebailey/ 
> Documents/James

I'm having trouble making sense of what you are trying to do with  
this command and from where you are trying to do it.

That open command looks incorrectly stated for Emacs on two fronts.   
Are you typing this command in somewhere (Emacs or the shell) or is  
this command being generated inside Emacs from one of the lilypond- 
mode menus?

First, Emacs doesn't use an "open" command to open files, it uses the  
sequence Control-x Control-f (C-x C-f [and note the case]).  If  
lilypond-mode is generating that command, it seems guaranteed to fail.

Second, you're trying to open a MIDI file (.midi) rather than a  
LilyPond file (.ly); I don't know if opening anything but a .ly file  
will automatically enter lilypond-mode in Emacs (assuming you have  
set up the correct Lisp code in your .emacs file first to require  
lilypond-mode when a .ly file is opened).

I just fired up Emacs and opened a LilyPond file with spaces in the  
file name and also in three levels of directories with spaces in  
their names, too, without any problem and no escape characters being  
used.  The file opened and lilypond-mode was automatically entered.   
From within Emacs, try:

C-x C-f ~/Documents/James Music/Choral Music/Windhauch/Windhauc.midi

Does that work any better?

Which version of Emacs are you using?  The one that comes with OS X  
and is accessed through the command line in Terminal is hopelessly  
out of date.  If you haven't already, try the GUI versions (the  
latest Carbon Emacs or Aquamacs, for example) which are much more  
recent builds, under active development and easier by far to use.  Or  
you can compile your own, the -current versions in the Emacs CVS  
repository have the necessary code to build a Mac .app package; you  
just need to set the right flags (--without-X --with-Carbon IIRC;  
it's been a long time since I compiled a version of Emacs, the  
available builds are very good indeed).

HTH!