Re: Transposing pitches in the lilypond file itself?

[David Kastrup]

Alasdair McAndrew <amca01@gmail.com> writes:

>> On Thursday 13 January 2022 01:02:17 (+11:00), David Kastrup wrote:
>>
>>> Emacs' LilyPond-mode is an abomination in desperate need of
>>> maintenance or possibly rewriting from scratch. There is no reason
>>> to use it unless you are one of those people who use Emacs for
>>> everything (in contrast, the mail/news client I am writing this in
>>> would be a reason to switch to Emacs rather than vice versa. As are
>>> the LaTeX modes). However, it probably has the only useable MIDI
>>> pitch recognition for polyphonic entry like those of accordions.
>>>
>>> If I needed to batch-convert some input regarding relative/absolute
>>> or transpose, I'd likely start up Frescobaldi. Never mind that it
>>> isn't the one editor to bring them all and in the darkness bind
>>> them.
>
> Thanks, David - for the heads up about Emacs Lilypond mode!  I don't
> use Emacs for everything, but I do use it for a lot of things; and
> certainly for anything involving text (like Lilypond) it's my standard
> go-to.  But what is it about the Lilypond mode which is so abominable?

It has comparatively fragile indentation that gets thrown off for
indiscernible reasons, it does not indent Scheme fragments well, it does
not allow for more than a single process under its control (which
frequently kills its viewer since it does not start it in the
background), it cannot do any manipulation interpreting pitches or
lengths (transposing, augmenting, relative/absolute conversion), it
doesn't offer support for writing mixed LaTeX/LilyPond stuff (like
lilypond-book), it does not offer contextual help even if you have the
Info files installed (which nevertheless beat the HTML docs hollow in
terms of usability).

> I just use it really for note-entering, and for each new piece I start
> off with one of my templates.  The font-lock minor mode (coloring) is
> very helpful. (Also, I'm curious - which Emacs mail system are you
> using?  I've tried several, but none of them really appealed to me.

Gnus.
 
> I'm now using the inbuilt mail system which is part of the Vivaldi
> browser.  I also agree about LaTeX: I've installed Emacs on my Windows
> machine as well because Emacs+auctex works for me better than any
> other editor or LaTeX IDE.)

Particularly when using preview-latex...

-- 
David Kastrup