Babel Lilypond Paper-Size (Preview & Export)

Question

When trying to use babel lilypond for music engraving inside org, I have got the following problem: The paper size used by lilypond is always a full page. But what I want is a minimal, growing paper size, suitable for rendering only one or more staffs and not using a full page for that.

What I have tried so far is the following:

#+name: lily_init
#+begin_src lilypond
#(set! paper-alist (cons '("preview" . (cons (* 210 mm) (* 20 mm))) paper-alist))
\paper {
  #(set-paper-size "preview")
}
\header{ tagline="" }
#+end_src

#+begin_src lilypond :file mixolydian.png :noweb yes
<<lily_init>>
\relative c' {a b c}
#+end_src

Which works, but is not exactly what I expected, as I have to create a paper-size for each staff count I am using.

The example from the ob-lilypond page does not render correctly for me (their example PDF looks fine though). If I try to render it, it renders one lilypond example per page, instead of placing them inline. See: Lilypond Example Org File Lilypond Example PDF

Is this the expected behaviour? Am I doing something wrong? Should I try to fix ob-lilypond?

Answer 1

The issue was fixed in f78a3c2b. The code below is no longer needed.

---

I updated lilypond.org to reflect changes in the lilypond codebase, so I think the problem is fixed, but let me know either way. You can find more information in the documentation. Basically, you will also need:

#(ly:set-option 'use-paper-size-for-page #f)
#(ly:set-option 'tall-page-formats 'pdf)

Answer 2

I use this config for small examples and guitar chords. It works fine when exported.

\paper {
      indent = 0\mm
      top-margin = 100\mm
      bottom-margin = 100\mm
      line-width=120\mm
      oddHeaderMarkup = ""
      evenHeaderMarkup = ""
      oddFooterMarkup = ""
      evenFooterMarkup = ""
    }