ly - Manipulate LilyPond source files
Usage:
ly [options] commands file, ...
A tool for manipulating LilyPond source files
The special option -- considers the remaining arguments to
be file names.
The command is one argument with semicolon-separated commands. In
most cases you’ll quote the command so that it is seen as one
argument.
You can specify more than one LilyPond file. If you want to
process many files and write the results of the operations on each file to a
separate output file, you can use two special characters in the output
filename: a ‘*’ will be replaced with the full path name of
the current input file (without extension), and a ‘?’ will be
replaced with the input filename (without path and extension). If you
don’t want to have ‘*’ or ‘?’ replaced in
the output filename, you can set -d replace-pattern=false.
If you don’t specify input or output filenames, standard
input is read and standard output is written to.
Informative commands that write information to standard output and
do not change the file:
- mode
- print the mode (guessing if not given) of the document
- version
- print the LilyPond version, if set in the document
- language
- print the pitch name language, if set in the document
Commands that change the file:
- indent
- re-indent the file
- reformat
- reformat the file
- translate
<language>
- translate the pitch names to the language
- transpose
<from> <to>
- transpose the file like LilyPond would do, pitches are given in the
‘nederlands’ language
- abs2rel
- convert absolute music to relative
- rel2abs
- convert relative music to absolute
- simplify-accidentals
- replace notes with accidentals as much as possible with their natural
neighbors
- write
[filename]
- write the file to the given filename or the output variable. If the last
command was an editing command, write is automatically called.
Commands that export the file to another format:
Between commands, you can set or unset a variable using:
- variable=value
- set a variable to value. Special values are true, false, which are
interpreted as boolean values, or digits, which will be interpreted as
integer values.
- variable=
- unset a variable
The following variables can be set to influence the behaviour of
commands. If there is a default value, it is written between brackets:
- mode
- mode of the file to read (default automatic) can be one of: lilypond,
scheme, latex, html, docbook, texinfo.
- output
[-]
- the output filename (also set by -o argument)
- encoding
[UTF-8]
- encoding to read (also set by -e argument)
- default-language
[nederlands]
- the pitch names language to use by default, when not specified otherwise
in the document
- output-encoding
- encoding to write (defaults to encoding, also set by the
--output-encoding argument)
- in-place
[false]
- whether to overwrite input files (same as -i)
- backup-suffix
[~]
- suffix to use when editing files in-place, if set, backs up the original
file before overwriting it
- replace-pattern
[true]
- whether to replace ‘*’ and ‘?’ in the output
filename.
- rel-startpitch
[true]
- whether to write relative music with a startpitch
- rel-absolute
- whether to assume that the first pitch in a relative expression without
specified startpitch is absolute. If false, it is assumed to be
relative to c'. If true, it is assumed to be absolute (in
fact relative to f. If not set, this variable defaults to
true only when the LilyPond version in the document >=
2.18.
- indent-tabs
[false]
- whether to use tabs for indent
- indent-width
[2]
- how many spaces for each indent level (if not using tabs)
- full-html
[True]
- if set to True a full document with syntax-highlighted HTML will be
exported, otherwise only the bare content wrapped in an element configured
by the wrapper- variables.
- stylesheet
- filename to reference as an external stylesheet for syntax-highlighted
HTML. This filename is literally used in the <link
rel="stylesheet"> tag.
- inline-style
[false]
- whether to use inline style attributes for syntax-highlighted HTML. By
default a css stylesheet is embedded.
- number-lines
[false]
- whether to add line numbers when creating syntax-highlighted HTML.
- wrapper-tag
[pre]
- which tag syntax highlighted HTML will be wrapped in. Possible values:
div, pre, id and code
- wrapper-attribute
[class]
- attribute used for the wrapper tag. Possible values: id and
class.
- document-id
[lilypond]
- name applied to the wrapper-attribute. If the three last options use their
default settings the highlighted HTML elements are wrapped in an element
<pre class="lilypond"></pre>
- linenumbers-id
[linenumbers]
- if linenumbers are exported this is the name used for the
<td> elements
These variables influence the output of information commands:
- with-filename
- prints the filename next to information like version, etc. This is
true by default if there is more than one file specified.
Here is an example to re-indent and transpose a LilyPond file:
ly "indent; transpose c d" -o output.ly file.ly
Examples using the ‘*’ in the output file name:
ly "transpose c d" *.ly -o '*-transposed.ly'
ly highlight *.ly -o 'html/?.html'