Re: Cannot pass number variable to \markup.

[Jean Abou Samra]

Le lundi 08 mai 2023 à 11:27 -0400, dfro a écrit :

Jean,

Thank you, for catching my omission of the CC to lilypond-user@gnu.org. I intended to reply to the group.

The use of variables for the \paper block makes more sense to me. However, I see that sometimes the numbers have no "#" before them, and sometimes they do as with:

inst-name-indent = #4.8

...and sometimes they do not, as with:

left-margin-title-page = 45

Also, setting true and false values use "##", as with:

ragged-last-setting = ##f

I am still not comprehending why the "#" is used sometimes and sometimes not. I am trying to grasp the nuances of how the lilypond language and the scheme language translate to each other.

Somewhere, in the documentation it talks about lilypond using the "#" to translate values into scheme language. Leaving off the "#" with numbers seems to break this rule.

inst-name-indent = 4.8

and

inst-name-indent = #4.8

are equivalent. LilyPond offers the first as syntactic sugar for the second. When it sees a number, it interprets it as number, like the Scheme interpreter behind # would have done. The exception is markup mode.

There is no such syntactic sugar for booleans, so you have to use an initial # to switch to Scheme mode. The second # is part of the syntax of booleans in Scheme (#t and #f, or #true and #false).

I also have a question about modes. Is normal mode where you input data outside a music block or without stating a mode explicitly, as with "\include "..."? I do not see it mentioned in "Notation Reference Manual, 3.1 Input modes". 

What I called “normal mode” is what the manual calls “note mode”.

Thank you, for the clear explanation of why \paper must be used for a "set-..." variable outside the main \paper block. That makes sense to me now.

I hope this is not too far off topic, but your "42 is the answer" reference led me to find this interesting article that is way over my head:https://news.mit.edu/2019/answer-life-universe-and-everything-sum-three-cubes-mathematics-0910.

Interesting, thanks for the link!

Best,

Jean

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