As per a previous thread, I recently installed the pre-compiled Slack 9 package for lilypond (music notation) and installed it on my Slack 10 system. It installed without any errors. Unfortunately, I am encountering the same errors that I got when I was running lilypond on Fedora.

After creating a "test.ly" file exported from Noteedit, I tried the command "ly2dvi test.ly" which should convert the ly file to dvi as the command name suggests. My problem is that EVERY time I type this command I receive an error saying that ly2dvi is NOT a valid command. It doesn't matter if I am logged in as root or as "todd". It never works. I tried "man lilypond" and that give me a manual for lilypond. So, I know that my package had installed. For some reason I can't get ly2dvi to work.

Please help!

More information is required. "file `which ly2dvi`" would be a start .

There is no ly2dvi script or command. If you want to create a .dvi from a .ly file, use:
lilypond --no-ps test.ly

root@todd:/home/todd# which ly2dvi
which: no ly2dvi in (/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin)


That must explain it!! The only reason I was trying to do ly2dvi is because the Noteedit website said that in order to convert a .ly file into a printable postscript (.ps) file is to first convert it to a dvi.

Soooooo, the big question is....

how do I convert a .ly file into a .ps file? I would REALLY like to be able to print!

Ok...I think I have made some progress. I created a test.ly file that I created in about 20 seconds in Noteedit. I tried the following command and received mixed results:

lilypond -PV test.ly

This line appears to be trying to convert the .ly into a .ps, HOWEVER it appears that ever attribute of the file returns an error. As a result, a .ps file is NOT generated.

What's going on?

Firstly, make sure that the .ly file you're using is good. Since you're using a program to generate it automatically, I doubt that this is the problem, but it's worth making sure. This file works fine for me.

You should be able to run lilypond without any switches, this will create a .dvi, a .ps, and a .pdf. If you don't want a pdf use the --no-pdf switch, if you only want a .dvi, use --no-ps.

The other thing that may be causing problems is that the TeX utilities may not be in your path. Try running /etc/profile.d/tetex.sh before running lilypond. If you're running a login shell, all the scripts in /etc/profile.d will be run automatically, but otherwise you'll need to either run them yourself, or add them to your .bashrc.

Thanks for your help!!!! I tried googling lilypond and postscript and I found a lot of good links. What is quite interesting is that when I visit the Noteedit website it suggests using a "ly2dvi" script followed by another which converts to ps. I bet those were used in a previous version of Lilypond.

One other thing I read during my search was something about how Tex under Slack uses different locations (or something like that). So, special accomidations need to be made.

I see from your profile, you use Slack 10.0. How did YOU setup your system with lilypond? Did you compile from source? Did you install thed Slack 9 pack on the lilypond website? Did you have to do anything "special" to get it working? Do tell!

Thanks!

Yeah, that would be my guess.

Indeed. I think that's what the tetex.sh script in /etc/profile.d is for.

Well, I was still running 9.1 when I first installed it. I used the 9.0 package from the website, since they warned that installing lilypond from source could be quite a complicated process. The only problem I had was with the TeX utilities not being in my path, but once I switched to using a login shell for my GNOME terminals (so that the scripts in profile.d were run automatically), it worked fine.

re: AxelFendersson

I used Lilypond to compile your file and it worked without a hitch. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get any files generated by Noteedit to compile using Lilypond. BAH! I don't know what to do. I guess I need Noteedit specific help.

Sounds that way. I'm afraid I've always written up the .ly files by hand, so I can't help you there. On the other hand, the lilypond markup language isn't too hard to learn, so there's always the option of doing the same yourself. Good luck!

Well, I emailed the author of Noteedit and told him of my problems. I have not yet received a reply to my email. However, when I checked the Noteedit website the site had been rolled back 2 versions. The version I am running is 2.6.4, but the website has 2.6.2 as the latest version. I wonder why that is.

I did have some success exporting my Noteedit files to abc format. I then run a script called "abcm2ps" and it converts the abc file (generated by Noteedit) to a postscript. So far all of my projects exported to abc have converted to beautiful ps files. I am really pleased.