Franco Pasut Web Site on Franco Pasut Web Site

Blogger posts and PDFs that can be embedded, scrolled through, and downloaded

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

1. Blogger and Embedded PDFs

Is it possible to embed PDF documents in posts published on Blogger without using additional applications?

Perhaps with the ability to scroll through the embedded documents and download them locally?

LilyPond: exploring polyphonic notation

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

1. A Very Brief Introduction

I’ve finally understood the “logic” behind LilyPond’s syntax as it relates to the different ways of writing multiple voices.

I’m writing down my “discovery” right away before I forget it—after all, that’s exactly what this “blog” is for!

Extracting musical fragments in PDF or PNG format

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

1. LilyPond, extracting score fragments: a detailed guide

This article was written using LilyPond version 2.24.4 and refers to page 3.5.1 of the official manual.

The page provides correct but incomplete instructions: the code is incomplete because the musical portion is missing.

Nano, the minimalist editor for quick and lightweight editing

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

1. Why Nano?

Nano is a command line text editor, known for being one of the simplest and most intuitive available in the GNU/Linux world.

It is found in most Linux distributions and is a tool that anyone can use “at first glance.”

Prolog: between logic and programming language

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

1. Introduction

Created in the 1970s for natural language processing and artificial intelligence, Prolog (short for “Programmation en Logique”) is a somewhat unusual programming language.

Prolog’s “logic” focuses on defining relationships and facts rather than sequential instructions.

The language is based on three fundamental pillars:

Vim... beyond Vim

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

1. Vim in five minutes

Vim is not just a text editor, it is an editing language that allows you to interact with text through logical key combinations.

The basis of Vim’s “language” is the “modal” system.

Personal observations on Robocopy, Rsync, and Rclone

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

1. Introduction

Robocopy: The “Robust File Copy” is a built-in powerhouse for Windows users. It’s the native way to handle massive local transfers or network shares (SMB) while perfectly preserving NTFS permissions.
Rsync: The de facto standard for the Unix world (Linux and macOS). It’s famous for its efficiency—instead of re-copying everything, it only syncs the specific parts of a file that have changed.

Comments on the APPLICATION BAR and KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS in WINDOWS and GNU/LINUX.

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

1. Introduction

In modern desktop environments, from Windows to mainstream GNU/Linux distributions, Alt+Tab remains the go-to shortcut for window switching.

Two open source tools for editing PDF documents: GUI versus CLI.

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

1. Introduction

The “PDF” is the essentially static document format par excellence.

However, even PDF documents can be modified, especially with operations such as deleting, adding, reversing pages, inserting text, and more.

There are various applications, including free ones, for performing these operations.

In this article, I will report some parallel observations between two systems for page manipulation: one graphical, PDF Arranger, and one command line, PDFtk.

Four text commands in GNU/Linux, MS Windows, and, with a bit of nostalgia, MS-DOS.

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

1. Does it still make sense to perform operations via the command line?

Talking about the command line in today’s operating systems might seem a bit vintage, as if the topic were a historical remnant of the first personal computers of the 1980s.

LibreOffice Writer and non-sequential page numbering.

Sat, 02 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

1. Subject of the article.

LibreOffice is an open source, multi-platform suite for document processing.

Great for writing, calculating, drawing, and much more.

The reference page in English can be found at this page.

Writer is the module of the Suite dedicated to word processing.

MS Windows: xcopy and robocopy with mentions of batch procedures and rsync.

Fri, 23 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Copy and Paste: the universal method.

To transfer files from one folder to another folder we usually use “copy and paste.”

Study on an example of integration between Python and LaTeX

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Subject of this article.

I am not a computer scientist but I have been using LaTeX for over ten years to write court documents. Only a few months ago I started to follow some tutorials on programming with Python.

LaTeX with Sublime Text and LaTeXools.

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

An article illustrating the use of Sublime Text for creating complex documents, with a focus on legal briefs written in LaTeX.

1. This article is about LaTeX and Sublime Text.

The outstanding typographic quality of LaTeX cannot be doubted.

Vim, Sublime Text, Visual Studio Code and the multiple cursors.

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Article on comparative handling of multiple cursors in Sublime Text, Visual Studio Code and Vim.

1. Multiple cursors? Multi-cursors? What are we talking about?

What are multiple cursors?

Vim and snippet lists for UltiSnips and other plugins.

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Article about the different collections of snippets designed for different plugins of Vim and the possibility of converting from type of format to another.

1. Preamble

In the article “Vim, UltiSnips and Honza vim-snippets: difference and management of the snippets and UltiSnips folders” I have already covered the topic of snippets and UltiSnips for Vim:

Extract a list of files from a folder and paste it into a document, in MS Windows, GNU/Linux and macOS.

Sun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Article on how to copy a list of files in a folder and paste the list into an open document. The operation is performed only with resources internal to the tested operating systems, which are MS Windows, GNU/Linux (Arch, Fedora and Ubuntu) and macOS, although in the last one, only in command-line mode.

1. Topic of this article.

Have you ever had a folder on your computer full of files and need to insert the list of those files in a page you are editing?

A Python program to copy text from various PDFs and collect it into a single document in Markdown language.

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

1. Subject of this article.

The goal is to generate a simple program to collect the text contained in various PDFs generated directly from word processing programs and insert the various fragments into a single document in Markdown language by separating the fragments with second-level headings corresponding to the name of the source documents.

Markdown with Vim, Emacs, Sublime Text 4 and Visual Studio Code

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

How are four generalist editors, i.e., designed to be used with a wide range of programming languages and text files, performing when writing documents in Markdown language? This is the subject of this article based on my personal experiences in using Vim, Emacs, Sublime Text 4 and Visual Studio Code both directly and with extensions dedicated to the above mentioned markup language.

1. Introduction.

Markdown is a simple markup language that is within anyone’s reach, compatible with HTML, and allows very elegant, well-formatted text to be written for both web and print publication.

Reducing the size of single or multiple PDF documents in GNU/Linux Bash and Python

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract: Compression of PDF documents is a useful technique to reduce the space occupied by these files and facilitate their transmission and storage. In this article, starting from a page devoted to compressing single PDFs, I present two methods for compressing multiple PDF documents. The reference page is as follows: “Linux shell script to reduce PDF file size (simple verification required to enter) and allows you to operate on single PDFs in command-line bash code in the GNU/Linux terminal. Based on the previous one, I tried to extend the procedure to operate on multiple PDFs. In the end I present a simple application in Python with graphical interface. I admit that I asked for some help from ChatGPT and Copilot.

Using Visual Studio Code to write scores in LilyPond.

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract: Visual Studio Code is an excellent integrated environment for writing programming codes, but can it also be used as an editor for the LilyPond language dedicated to writing music?

1. Previous articles on editors for LilyPond.

On the subject of writing musical scores using LilyPond, a markup language equivalent to LaTeX for lyrics, I recall my previous articles devoted to Emacs and Vim, respectively:

Automatic generation of hyperlinks in LaTeX environment, using Vim's Regular Expressions, between PDF documents.

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Vim is an editor with endless capabilities. It can also generate hyperlinks in LaTeX language to other locally stored documents, thanks to its built-in Regular Expressions. For lawyers, this means linking a legal document with its related evidentiary materials. This is the analysis of the procedure.

1. Subject of this article.

Sometimes it is necessary to include in a main PDF document a list of documents to be retrieved with specific hyperlinks dedicated to each item in the list.

From Text Objects in Vim to Text Blocks in Gutenberg for WordPress.

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

About Vim and Gutenberg.

Vim is a command-line editor. Gutenberg for WordPress is a visual editor.

Vim was created in 1987, as an evolution from the earlier Vi. Gutenberg has become the default editor for WordPress since version 5.0 of the CMS, released on November 27, 2018.

They are chronologically and structurally very distant writing tools.

But despite the differences, there are also some similarities.

Vim allows writing by treating text as an “object.” Gutenberg allows writing by treating text as a “block.”

Linux: rename, rename.ul, prename, perl-rename: what a confusion!

Sun, 22 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Summary of this article.

In this article I report some observations on how to rename documents in GNU/Linux using text commands, clarifying some differences between various distributions.

The rename command does not, in fact, have unique behavior in distributions derived from Debian versus those derived from Fedora and Arch.

I will try to clarify the content of different commands and the different behavior of commands that have the same name.

Two open-source solutions for framing images

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

What is the topic of this article?

In this article, I describe two simple methods for decorating both single and multiple images with an outline frame, using two open-source resources in the GNU/Linux operating environment.

The first solution uses a graphics application. The second, on the other hand, is command-line.

Adding a frame to images is very useful in excerpts of documents published on sites and blogs.

In these cases, in fact, adding a border serves to “detach” documents published as images from the base document in which they are published.

LaTeX: some considerations on font size

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

LaTeX: class definition, standard classes and font sizes.

In LaTeX, the term “class” refers to a predefined or custom document type that determines the general layout, style, and options available for formatting a document.

The classes in LaTeX are identified by the file extension .cls and provide the basic instructions for document structure.

The main features of a class in LaTeX relate to the page format as well as the style of the title, of the sections and text.

Powerful OCR system under GNU/Linux for PDF documents managed from command line and with refinement by Vim.

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction.

The idea came from reading this article about optical character recognition (OCR) in the GNU/Linux environment from images and PDF, managed from the command line.

Obviously, PDF documents are those scanned from paper original, i.e., not obtained by direct saving of document in digital format. For the latter, no OCR is needed.

The article is very well written and the end result is very good.

I wondered if it would be possible to aggregate all the steps into a single text command.

Notes on resolving differences between two documents with the built-in resources of Vim and Emacs

Sun, 07 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

What are we talking about?

In this article, I report my practical experience on how to use the built-in resources of Vim and Emacs to resolve and undo differences between two documents.

In fact, I’ve occasionally updated two documents in such a “messy” way that I could no longer remember which updates to keep on one and the other.

Both Vim and Emacs offer very simple and effective built-in tools for checking and resolving such differences.

Emacs, portable self-installing configuration with "use-package" and "straight"

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Emacs, use-package and straight in short.

Emacs uses the GNU ELPA (Emacs Lisp Package Archive) for updating installed packages.

MELPA (Milkypostman’s Emacs Lisp Package Archive) is, on the other hand, an unofficial manager with numerous other packages and must be installed by following the directions on this page.

The original methods for installing packages are as follows:

M-x package-install <RET> package-name <RET>
M-x package-list-packages <RET> followed by i on the desired packages and x for the actual installation of the selected packages.

To update packages you open the package-list above and press U followed by x.

About LaTeX, standalone, PDF and PNG

Sat, 11 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

LaTeX and the document format

As, of course, you all already know (:smiley:), LaTeX is a language dedicated to the typesetting of documents with state-of-the-art quality.

It is, therefore, unnecessary to note that the basics of LaTeX can be learned in about 30 minutes, as illustrated in this page.

For the purposes of this article, it is sufficient to recall that sources in LaTeX are composed of a preliminary part, also called the preamble, and the document with the contents.

A study on the export and import of musical scores between LilyPond and MuseScore via MusicXML

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

About LilyPond and MuseScore.

LilyPond and MuseScore are the two most interesting open source projects dedicated to music notation.

LilyPond is a markup language, compatible with LaTeX (I refer you to this my article on LaTeX and LilyPond for writing text and music), that allows you to write musical scores of high graphical quality using text characters.

This feature makes it, among other things, also usable by AI systems, such as ChatGPT, to write autogenerated scores.

Vim and the Markdown preview

Sat, 11 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Preamble

Vim is an excellent editor for Markdown, both for its own “native” features and for the possibility of adding specific functions via “plugins.”

Previewing documents requires, unless you use the “manual” solution mentioned at the end of this article, using a dedicated “plugin.”

Until a few years ago, my favorite was “iamcco/markdown-preview.vim” because it provided a true real-time live effect while typing text, even before periodic saving.

Unfortunately, that project has been abandoned since February 2020.

Place side-by-side or overlapping images in GIMP with automatic Container adjustment

Thu, 26 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

What is GIMP?

GIMP is an excellent cross-platform image editor: Windows, macOS and any GNU/Linux distribution.

It is a full-featured software, strictly open-source and free.

Perfect for trying to create a “collage” of overlapping or side-by-side images, even with different sizes, and export the result as a single image in .jpg or .png format.

Side-by-side and overlapping images

I have repeatedly needed to “blend” several images side by side or overlapping.

Converting documents from the .tex format of LaTeX to the .docx format of MS Word

Mon, 02 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Preface on LaTeX and MS Word

I have been using LaTeX for about thirty years to write documents of all kinds: court documents, reports, research, projects and more.

After overcoming the challenging initial learning curve, therefore, it is very unlikely that one will go back to “traditional” word processing systems: the extraordinary typographic quality and considerable time savings have become indispensable.

Sometimes, however, it is necessary to exchange material written in LaTeX to friends and colleagues who have not yet had the opportunity to appreciate it.

Converting from Org Mode to Markdown GFM

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Does it make sense to talk about Org Mode instead of Markdown?

Why should I use Org-Mode to write articles to be published network in Markdown format?

Wouldn’t it be more convenient to write the articles directly in Markdown?

The question is more than justified and the answer is not obvious.

First, let me remind you that Org-Mode is a mode of GNU/Emacs. While there are various plugins for other editors, including Vim, none of them can match the outstanding efficiency of the original system.

Vim - VimTex, Emacs - AucTeX: create environments in empty fields

Sat, 10 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Subject of this post

This post is a follow-up to my previous one named “Vim, VimTex: environments and commands in LaTeX” in which I described the creation of environment tags in the LaTeX language through Vim’s “surround.vim” plugin.

Specifically, I described how to add environment tags to words and lines objects non-empty, that is, starting from already existing text.

If you need a reminder about the concept of “line” in Vim, you can refer to this article of mine: “What is intended by “line” in Vim? How to configure a dual alternate mode of movement between lines?”

About Vim and the Global Command

Sat, 03 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Vim and the Global Command: basic structure

This post is not a complete review of Vim’s Global Command but is just a series of personal observations on it.

You can find a good review, written by those who know much more about it than I do, on this page.

With the “Global Command” of Vim (g) you can replicate various ex-commands on multiple lines.

The basic structure of the Global Command is very simple: :g/pattern/command, meaning:

Vim, VimTex: environments and commands in LaTeX

Sat, 26 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A smart system for writing

Vim is a great editing tool.

LaTeX is a “State of the Art” typesetting system.

Vim and LaTeX together make a powerful writing system, but an add-on is needed to relate them.

VimTex provides exactly that target by relating Vim to LaTeX, and it does its job very well.

So Vim and VimTex is a smart system for every kind of writer in LaTeX.

The topic is vast and certainly cannot be contained in a short post like this one.

Vim Is Magic or Nomagic?

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

What’s this joke?

The title is a joke with the name of “V.I.M.” but, at the same time, it’s a real mode of Vim itself: the Magic Mode.

To understand what Magic Mode is, the primary source is the item :help magic in Vim.

In a few words:

The Magic Mode refers to the regular expressions
The Magic Mode is enabled by default in Vim.
You can explicitly invoke the Magic Mode with the \m command in the RegEx search area.
To deactivate it you must set \M (capitalized m) in the RegEx search area.
When you use the \M command you invoke the Nomagic Mode.
Nomagic Mode turns “almost all special regex symbols into ordinary ones unless they start with a backslash”.
There is also a Very Nomagic Mode that extends the effect to other characters, not relevant to this article.

When is magic mode (default) better than nomagic?

To analyze the difference between magic and nomagic mode, I resume a formula from a previous article of mine.

Markdown in Firefox

Mon, 24 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

Use Mozilla Firefox as a Markdown documents viewer written on Linux Ubuntu, Fedora and Arch, with mention of MS Windows and macOS.

Mozilla Firefox and the Markdown layout

Mozilla Firefox, one of the best Internet browsers, does not natively read documents written in Markdown.

If you try to open a document written in Markdown, the browser asks whether it should save it locally or open it with an application among those offered by the operating system. But it doesn’t render the document.

Vim, UltiSnips and Honza vim-snippets: difference and management of the snippets and UltiSnips folders

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

What is the subject of this article?

In this article I will talk about Vim, snippets powered by SirVer UltiSnip: “the ultimate solution for snippets in Vim” and Honza vim-snippets (hereafter also simply referred as “honza”).

For some more information you can refer to this previous article of mine.

SirVer UltiSnip is a plugin to launch and manage snippets in Vim.

The application does not contain snippets but you can create your own by following the plugin syntax or use a collection of ready-made snippets.

Vim: study on transposing lists of names from horizontal to vertical

Sat, 24 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Primary purpose of the study.

Initial status: series of inline names, separated by a semicolon followed by a space.
Objective: Transpose all names into one column by removing both semicolons and spaces.
Purpose: Creating list for mail-merging with e-mail client (Thunderbird).
Tools: Vim and built-in RegEx function.
Example:

Secondary goal

To test the integration between Markdown and css tags.

Vim: replace text in all opened buffers with only one command

Tue, 20 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Vim: do you need to replace some text in all opened buffers?

Do You need to perform a substitution between two words or text fragments in all opened buffers?

The first option is to open all the buffers and perform a search with substitution in each of them.

The search and replace string will look like the one below, where foo will be the data element to be replaced and bar will be the replaced data element.

Comparison of Vim and Emacs for a substitution operation using regular expressions

Mon, 12 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Preface

This article is a summary of two previous posts that you can read at these pages:

The topic of “regular expressions” in Vim and Emacs is well suited for a functional comparison across the four different scenarios covered in the above articles to which I refer for a description of the syntax.

Emacs: Study on constructing Regular Expressions to delete or reduce blank lines

Mon, 05 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

After writing an article focusing on “Vim: Study on constructing Regular Expressions to delete or reduce blank lines with Global Command” I tried to match with a similar operation with Emacs.

The goal is to study the differences in syntax related to “regular expressions” between two writing systems.

The following is the result of my attempts after various searches on the net.

Removing blank lines in Emacs using RegExp

First of all, it may be useful to display the blank lines in the document.

Vim: Study on constructing Regular Expressions to delete or reduce blank lines with Global Command

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Preface

On the topic of this article you may find interesting the following one: “Vim and Regular Expressions for removing redundant whitespace”.

Unlike the previous article, here the presence of whitespace causes different solutions than blank lines regardless of the number of their occurrences.

The study in this article is focused on both the analysis of “regular expressions” and Vim’s global command.

Vim and the Global Command

The Global Command in Vim is the g key.

What is intended by "line" in Vim? How to configure a dual alternate mode of movement between lines?

Fri, 05 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Why is the Vim line definition “special”?

In Vim a “line” is a set of characters that ends with a return line.

Is that all?

It seems obvious, but how does it differ from the definition of “line” in other writing systems?

Simple: in other environments usually “lines” break at the right margin of the monitor. In Vim they don’t.

Nothing changes for short lines, that is, lines that do not exceed the margin right margin.

Vim and Regular Expressions for removing redundant whitespace

Tue, 19 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction and structure of the article

I wrote this article to practice “in situ” formula construction of Regular Expressions also called RegEx in Vim.

In particular, the goal is to “clean up” documents with excess whitespace at both the beginning and end of each line.

A basic knowledge of Vim and the Regular Expressions built into the editor is sufficient for understanding the article.

The various formulas are applied to whole documents but, since they are very normal search commands in Vim, they can be applied to individual rows or to specific ranges of rows in the context of the document.

Jumping between matching pairs of characters and tags in Vim and Emacs

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

It is very useful to jump through corresponding pairs of characters, such as parentheses or tags, when coding or writing in a markup language such as HTML, Markdown or LaTeX.

Both Vim and Emacs have dedicated commands for this purpose.

To jump between matching pairs using Vim

Vim uses a “single character” command to jump to the nearest pairs of corresponding characters and to place the cursor into the closing one: %.

Text documents: from PDF to vector images

Mon, 02 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Subject of this article

Recently I needed to convert some documents from PDF format, containing text generated by LaTeX in GNU/Linux operating systems, into vector images.

While avoiding conversion from online services, I basically found three interesting solutions: two in command-line mode (pdf2svg and pdftocairo) and one, very famous, in graphical mode (Inkscape).

In this article I report my evaluations highlighting some differences deriving from the source of the PDF documents and the behaviour of three Linux distributions.

LaTeX, three packages for one document

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

LaTeX, three packages for one document

The standard version of LaTeX has a “state of the art” typographic quality, suitable for any type of document.

For those who want to try different typographical solutions it is, however, possible to use packages that modify the basic settings.

The result may be more or less preferable to the standard version but it is, however, interesting to make some comparative tests.

In this article I compare the title page of an agreement document in the standard version, in the version named koma-script and in the further version named ArsClassica.

Vim: copy text directly to the operating system clipboard

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Cut and copy in Vim: introduction

As an introduction to the topic regarding the Cut, Copy and Paste functions in Vim you can read a previous article of mine.

The subject of the current article is, instead, a Vim functionality I discovered while reading this page and which is closely related to the previous topic.

Vim can directly redirect cut and copy operations performed on texts to the system memory register (clipboard).

Using Emacs to write scores in LilyPond

Wed, 09 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

About LilyPond

LilyPond is a language for producing elegant musical scores, structurally similar to LaTeX with which it can integrate to generate documents containing text and music (for the integration between LilyPond and LaTeX you can read to this article of mine.)

Also in LilyPond, as in LaTeX, you can write the content with various editors.

Very useful, especially to learn the syntax, is the editor called Frescobaldi.

For those who have already learned the syntax, it may be useful, instead, to use the endless potential of Emacs and Vim,

Using Vim to write scores in LilyPond

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

About LilyPond

Also in LilyPond, as in LaTeX, you can write the content with various editors.

Very useful, especially to learn the syntax, is the editor called Frescobaldi.

For those who have already learned the syntax, it may be useful to use the infinite potential of Emacs and Vim,

Variables in LaTeX documents exported from Emacs Org Mode

Sat, 15 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The usual introduction to Emacs, Org Mode and LaTeX

This is the usual introduction to Emacs, Org Mode and LaTeX: if you already know everything you can skip it.

Org Mode under GNU Emacs is a very powerful tool for organizing ideas.

An excellent features of this tool is its ability to directly export documents from Org Mode to LaTeX, the absolute excellence for pagination, as well as to other languages such as Markdown and HTML.

LilyPond, ties and voices (advanced)

Thu, 30 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The object of this article

The object of the article is the same as my this previous article but now I have composed, using the LilyPond language, a short score for piano with a little bit more complex voices and ties combinations.

I have also created a colour image highlighting the points of interest.

The following terms from the LilyPond lexicon must, of course, be regarded:

oneVoice: a single voice line
voiceOne: the upper melody line of a polyphonic composition
voiceTwo: the lower melody line of a polyphonic composition

And now let’s have a look at the LilyPond code

Here’s the complete LilyPond code in which you will find each line commented and, in particular, the crossing points shown in the score below.:

LilyPond, ties and voices

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

LilyPond: ties and voices

In the default LilyPond configuration, it is not possible to tie a note in a single-voice with the same note but belonging to a contextual multi-voices environment.

I recently had to resolve an author’s passage involving just such a problem and asked for help to the amazing LilyPond community.

So I learned a new “trick” that I would like to share with everyone: you can change the context in which ties operate.

LilyPond: anacrusis, tuplets, multiple voices

Sat, 23 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A very short introduction

LilyPond is an incredible and powerful language for writing music scores.

Every musician should learn it. But writing code is more suitable for programmers than for musicians and many attempts have to be made to write complete scores.

In this post I show you some coding snippets regarding anacrusis, tuplets and multiple voices (If you’re reading this article you know what they are).

Here is the basic patterns for each of them in LilyPond language:

Vim: some modalities to open single or multiple documents

Sat, 09 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Synthesis table

Some Vim commands we’ll talk about:

I write	To get
`vim document_name`	To run Vim and open a document
`gvim document_name`	To run Graphical Vim and open a document
`vim file-1 file-2 file-n`	To run Vim and open multiple documents
`vim -p file-1 file-2 file-n`	To run Vim and open multiple documents in tabs
`vim -o file-1 file-2 file-n`	To run Vim and open multiple documents in separate windows with horizontal rows
`vim -O file-1 file-2 file-n`	To run Vim and open multiple documents in separate windows with vertical rows
`sp doc_name`	To split a new file while Vim is running
`vs doc_name`	To vertical split a new file while Vim is running
`tabe doc_name`	To open a new file in a dedicated tab while Vim is running

Vim offers a lot of options to open or create single or multiple files from the command line or while the application is running.

Vim: searching for text containing a slash or a question mark

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Vim: the search command

To activate a text search in Vim, press one of the following trigger keys in your keyboard:

the slash "/" key (do not confuse with the back-slash "\" key)
the question mark key.

By pressing the slash "/" key will activate a forward search.

By pressing the question mark "/" key will activate a backward search.

To move the cursor to the results in your document, press the "n" key (mnemonic for “next”). To invert the direction of the cursor, press the "N" key, (“upper n”).

Vim, Markdown, Snippets, UltiSnips: how to get a well-formatted link with a single command

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Objective of this post

The objective of this post is to get a correctly formatted link in Markdown by merging in a single command a fragment of text and an Internet address previously saved in the Vim clipboard.

Of course I assume that everybody that’s reading this post knows how to create a well formatted link in Markdown, i.e. text in square brackets and URL in round brackets.

Why did I ask myself this question?

LaTeX: creating and using variables to save time and reduce typing errors

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Variables and legal documents

My work consists of writing legal documents.

Legal documents are full of data and many of them have to be repeatedly inserted.

Think, for example, about the names of people or of places, dates of events, etc.

A method is needed to avoid manually repeating recurring data when writing documents, both to avoid wasting time and typing errors.

A good system is to use “variables”, i.e. placeholders that take on different values depending on the documents in which they are inserted.

Emacs, Expand-region and LaTeX

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Emacs and text objects

In composite documents there are often text fragments within well-defined semantic elements: parentheses of various kinds, single or double inverted commas, trailing commas, etc.

In some text editors (Vim, in particular) they’re called “text objects”.

Emacs can handle these text blocks with a package called Expand-region that “increases the selected region by semantic units (original definition from the programmer’s GitHub page): parenthesis, brackets, quotes, sentences and other objects”.

Vim: Cut, Copy and Paste to and from the System Clipboard

Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Cut, Copy and Paste using the computer keyboard

Everybody knows how to use the keyboard combinations Ctrl-c, Ctrl-x and Ctrl-v in Windows and Linux (or Cmd-c, Cmd-x and Cmd-v in macOS) to copy, cut and paste text across applications.

Many think that those combinations are universal and work with any application. But it’s not true.

Vim uses another system to exchange information with other applications.

For example, in Vim under GNU/Linux, the key combination Ctrl-v corresponds to the visual block function and does not affect the pasting text.

Linux: move "home/user" directory back to the same "root" partition

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

What’s my target?

I’ve installed, as it should always be, a Linux distribution in two separate partitions.

In particular: the root directory in /dev/sdb2 partition and the home/user directory in /dev/sdb3 one.

After some time, I wanted to return the home/user directory to the same root partition.

Why I need it? I’d like to dedicate every partition to different Linux distributions.

What I’ve read before writing this article?

In the net I found many tutorials about moving the home/user directory to other partition, but not so many on the opposite operation.

Animated GIFs about basic RegEx in Vim and Emacs

Tue, 13 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A non-preface about RegEx

In my little experience as a LaTeX writer using Vim and Emacs, I sometimes use the extraordinary efficiency of RegEx, also known as RegExp or “Regular Expressions”.

Vim and Emacs, provide built-in support for RegEx.

I’ll show you in the following clips some elementary uses of regex in both editors.

The software developer community will smile, but the following animated GIFs are intended for writers, not computer programmers.

Vim: delete sentences and paragraphs via Text Objects

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Vim reduces the strain on your eyes

An unbelievable feature of Vim is the ability to perform operations within entire blocks of text called “Text Objects”, such as words, sentences and paragraphs, regardless of the cursor position inside the objects.

This means you can place the cursor randomly within the blocks and reduce the strain of your eyes towards the monitor.

The "evolution line" across Ed, Vi and Vim

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A little preface about Ed, Vi and Vim

Have you ever heard of Ed and Vi? Maybe you’ve heard of Vim.

They are command line text editors.

Ed was created in 1969 and it was one of the first components of Unix O.S.

Vi dates from 1976 and it was the “de facto” standard editor for Unix until the arrival, in 1984, of Emacs.

Vim was born in 1991 and it’s actually the fastest editor in the univers!

Vim, flash movements between windows with EasyMotion

Tue, 11 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Quick introduction

Vim can quickly jump through different documents at a lightning speed.

Do you remember when you had to move the cursor using the arrow keys and pressing them continuosly until the final point?

If you use Vim, the above actions will be only bad memories.

You only have to install the EasyMotion plugin and make a miniml configuration.

Installation and configuration of EasyMotion

The EasyMotion plugin installation is really a kid’s joke.

Join lines in Emacs using US International Dead Keys layout

Sat, 08 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Join-lines: Vim vs Emacs

Vim has a very simple system to join two lines. All you have to do is press the J (uppercase) key inside the line above.

In Emacs, instead, you must use the C-^ binding in the lower line.

But the Emacs solution may seem a bit more laborious if you use a keyboard with US International Dead Keys layout in MS Windows or GNU/Linux.

However, with a few small adjustments, it can become super-efficient.

Emacs, Markdown-mode, insert spaces in text links created by the "C-c C-l" command

Sat, 01 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The reference environment: Emacs, Markdown-mode, insert a link

This article applies to the following environment:

Emacs: GNU Emacs 26.3 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.22.30) of 2019-12-03
Markdown Mode: markdown-mode-20200622.20
OS: Linux Ubuntu 20.4 LTS, Linux Fedora 32

The problem in a few words: You need to insert a link in a document written using Markdown-mode for Emacs and in the Link text you need to insert one or more spaces.

LaTeX, LilyPond and lyluatex package: state-of-the-art text and music typesetting

Sat, 21 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

LaTeX and LilyPond

LaTeX is a "state-of-the art" pagination system for text, maths and more.

LilyPond is the same for musical scores.

LaTeX and LilyPond together are a true excellence to mix music notation and text within same documents.

But it is not so easy to generate documents by using that combination of markup languages.

This post is intended as a simple introduction to start using LaTeX and LilyPond in documents containing text and music notation.

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About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to my personal website.

I only write to keep my mind active in order to slow down the unavoidable “entropy” .

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