Re: frescobaldi vs. org-babel-lilypond

[James Harkins]

Steven Arntson <steven <at> stevenarntson.com> writes:

> I may be getting in over my head with this question. I'm a new user of
Lilypond,
> transitioning away from Musescore. I've
> been using Frescobaldi a bit, and am impressed with it so far.
> 
> However, I see there's an Emacs mode available through org-babel called
> "Arrange Mode". I'm a user of Emacs (though far from an expert!), and I
> love the environment.
> 
> Does anyone have familiarity with both, who could highlight a few of the
> differences? Frescobaldi has many features I doubt I'll use much (such
> as the Quick Insert menu). Mainly what I like about it is the
> integration of the windows--text entry, music display, lilypond
> messages, and MIDI playback. I wonder if that could be done with a
> dedicated Emacs instance.

I would cast my vote for Frescobaldi, actually.

I went through a phase of trying to do everything in Emacs -- org-mode,
e-mail (Wanderlust), LilyPond-mode, sclang-mode for SuperCollider. Now I use
Emacs only for org-mode -- and by itself, that's a good enough reason to
keep Emacs around. (I'm not kidding -- it's the best organizer/authoring
tool I've ever seen.)

For me, the thing that seals the deal in favor of Frescobaldi is its
syntax-aware autocompletion. It's pretty good at hiding completion options
that are not appropriate in that location -- good enough that, if I expect a
completion menu and one doesn't appear, that's often a red flag to recheck
the syntax.

LilyPond-mode may have grown since I stopped using it, but at the time, its
completion tables left out a lot of valuable keywords, and it provides
basically no on-the-fly assistance with syntax.

Plus, the integrated PDF viewer with point-and-click to jump to the bit of
code responsible for a glyph, and which also highlights the glyph coming
from the text cursor's location, saves HOURS of navigation time. Really,
seriously.

My opinion is that Emacs-purity isn't worth losing the conveniences of
Frescobaldi.

hjh