I've started a new thread on this because, although it started in the 'ABC versus Notation' thread as kind of relevant, this is taking it into definite thread drift.

If Moderators think it better off in the 'ABC versus Notation' thread please move this there and delete this thread.

GUEST Jon posted versions of the Kesh jig in ABC and in Lilypond. The Lilypond versions, both machine generated, were much longer than the ABC files. I spent an hour or so this morning and came up with the following;


\version "2.18.2"
\header {
      encodingdate = "2018-06-19"
      title = "The Kesh Jig"
      subtitle = " "}
             \relative d' {\key g \major \time 6/8
       \repeat volta 2 {
       \partial8
            d8 | g4. g8 a b | a b a a b d | e d d g d d | e d b d b a \break
            g4. g8 a b | a b a a b d | e d d g d b | a g fis g4 } \break
       \repeat volta 2 {
       \partial8
            a8 | b4. d8 b d | e g e d b a | b4. d8 b g | a b a a g a | \break
            b a b d b d | e g e d b d | g fis g a g a | b g fis g4 |
       }
       }



Compare this with the ABC



X:1
T:The Kesh Jig
O:Ireland
S:John B. Walsh Session Tunes
R:Jig
M:6/8
K:G
P:A
|:D|"G"~G3 GAB|"D"ABA ABd|"G"edd gdd|"G"edB "D"dBA|
    "G"~G3 GAB|"D"ABA ABd|"G"edd gdB|"D"AGF "G"G2:|
P:B
|:A|"G"~B3 dBd|"C"ege "G"dBG|"G"~B3 dBG|"D"ABA AGA|
    "G"BAB dBd|"C"ege "G"dBd|"G"gfg "D"aga|"G"bgf g2:|


It's a lot closer in size.
         

Lilypond puts a lot of stuff in automatically. All the '|' characters in the file do not have to be there. I put them in so that I could find my place in the code for editing. Remove these from the file and Lilypond puts the bar lines in anyway. The thinking behind Lilypond seems much more complicated than ABC but the files can be quite simple.