(a)
: "Thus this explains why I can run error free (in Unix) but you cannot (in Windows). Try dropping -danti-alias-factor entirely."
OK, I am glad to set that to rest. Not necessary to use anti-alias factor or mess with invoking pngtopnm on Windows. Another random-rat-maze learning experience: there is nothing down that hole.
(b)
: "And finally have you tried importing pdf into Scribus?"
DF quoting from someone on the Lilypond mailing list:
"Accepting that you will never get an image file as good looking as PDF, since PDF scales, then something like lilypond --png -dresolution=900 should give you a better image than you need."
No, I have not yet tried importing .pdf into Scribus.
I had naively assumed that .pdf was not intended for any use other than public document distribution, and I was completely unaware that "you will never get an image file as good looking as PDF" (since many of the pdf's I read are scans of fairly marginal quality and that is what I am used to) and so, I hadn't considered it.
I will re-evaluate this of course. But the only presenting reason for importing .pdf into Scribus, at the moment, is that .pdf might give better results with the export of Lilypond content than .png. The proof is a simple matter of exporting identical content from Lilypond in both formats and printing a page containing both; I'll get to it (ahh, it's inconvenient because I got fed up with the frequent planned obsolescence of consumer printers and ink cartridges, and don't keep one, so I have to go out.) But as the Lilypond list poster said, it should easily be possible to increase the .png resolution to the point where any difference is imperceptible. 300 dpi seems adequate, 600 dpi would be overkill ? and 900 more so.
By the way, I had an email exchange with the guy who wrote Lily-compile, who says that he had never intended for Lily-compile to do finished output (which he himself does from the command line) but that he intended it only for instant code checking from within Atom in the process of writing Lilypond code. However, given that Lily-compile can accept any command string that could be used on the command line, I don't see the benefit of this position, and I don't see any difference in the output.
(c)
: "Importing svg from LilyPond might give cleaner images than importing png"
I have had this in mind all along as a possibility and assumed it when I started in with Lilypond a month ago, but now having done a number of draft prints from my Scribus files, including one from my local pro printer who didn't complain about the image quality, I don't see that anything is lacking in the .png files that I have been using to date. (It could be that I don't know what the print standard really should be and that my printer was just humoring me. But the image quality has not been an issue with my draft prints. )
The "might give cleaner images" is not very compelling now that I have hi-res .png files available, particularly if I have to get into tweaking the .svg code for every file, adding an extra step. What _would_ be a reason for using .svg, is if there is some graphical result that I cannot figure out how to accomplish with Lilypond code, such that I would want to open the file in Inkscape and push the GROBs around or add some more elements. I can imagine this as a likely scenario, but the Lilypond docs assure me that Lilypond has every possible tweak built in, and so far I have found code snippets to do everything I have needed.
The bottom line for me is that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, so if I have something that works well enough, I am happy. If I determine that one thing works and another doesn't, I am inclined to go with what works now and not wrestle for too long with the problem of why the other thing doesn't work, because for me, such quests have so often ended in a morass because of my lack of technical knowledge. I do, however, very much appreciate the work of those who are capable and motivated to wrestle with those problems, because otherwise all of this open-source software would not exist. Thanks!
Dragonfly, when do you think that you may have a version of the Markdown-to-Scribus pipeline ready to test?