Re: Migrating from commercial music notation software to free alternative

[David Kastrup]

address@hidden writes:

> On Wed, 12 Jun 2019, ah wrote:
>> ... using a TeX-based or TeX-like (free) music composition system, if
>> available and doing all programming, templating etc. in this myself.
>> Advantages: platform independent and free.
>
> Lilypond is not TeX-based

Well, not any more (as of version 2.0).

> nor conceptually TeX-like, despite the fact that it uses backslashes.

It's a batch processing system with plain text input syntax.  That makes
for workflows not unaccustomed to LaTeX users.  By the way, it did
actually pass lyrics including backslashes on to TeX at one point of
time.

> Its programming interface is all based on Scheme and works quite
> differently from TeX macro expansion.

Its syntax is quite less ad-hoc than that of TeX, but at least LaTeX
with its comparatively rigid constructs tries keeping the mess that TeX
can be in the likeness of something structured.

> If you just mean "free" when you say TeX-like, fine, but if you want
> something that is programmable the same way TeX is, then you should
> consider other free software that is more closely connected to TeX.

"Programmable the same way TeX is" is basically just TeX because TeX is
so very weird.  LilyPond's music functions do a pretty nice job filling
the niche of transforming input of some reasonably concise form into
something else.  For people exploring system-governed music, that can
bring the system closer to the surface.

-- 
David Kastrup