Talk:GNU LilyPond
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[edit] Sample .ly file
It would be profitable to add a small sample .ly file (and an image of the generated sheet music) to the article, just to show people how easy it is to write Lilypond music. Perhaps some day a high school teacher will be inspired by this article and start creating music with Lilypond instead of writing it by hand (or buying Finale.) --Ardonik 05:40, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
- Okay, here's my small addition. I hope it's the right size for an example. I have some thoughts about it, though: Right now, it's just a huge commented file. Should the example file be broken into parts and comments put to other places? I hesitated to do that, because it's beautiful to have an example you can copy-paste and run - and there are better tutorials/manuals for Lilypond anyway... --Wwwwolf 17:13, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- Thanks. I've updated it to 2.6 syntax and simplified some things a bit. It may be even nicer
to start with a real small example, say
\relative { \time 6/8 a'16( gis a b c d e4) r8 }
which allows viewing and comparing the input and result in one glance. Of course, this is just what the [HowTo] and [Tutorial] are for. -- JCN 30 June 2005 15:32 (UTC)
- I agree with the idea of starting with a short sample, if we're describinging the notation. A "demo" on the other hand, would have to be more complex, if we're showcasing the output. It depends on what the emphasis is: method or result.
- So maybe a simple example or two for the notation, and then a nice-looking demo (which we already have). --Uncle Ed 16:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Esthetic judgment?
Hi,
I take issue with
- While it has achieved this, the quality of output from competing commercial packages has improved since the inception of the LilyPond project so that they are now comparable
because it implies that LilyPond can be considered "done" from a typographical POV (which it isn't, IMO). Furthermore, "comparable" is a vague statement: mosquitos and elephants are comparable, and the result of the comparison is that the elefant is bigger. Esthetics aren't well defined, but most printout of Finale and Sibelius still (we're speaking 2006) looks made with a computer.
I think I am not the right person to edit the page itself, though.
Han-Wen (LilyPond Author).
- Han-Wen, thank you for stopping by Wikipedia and providing your feedback. You may be correct that the comment is unwarranted, though I think you'll agree that Sibelius and Finale have both come a long way, typographically, since their state at the time that you made the first public releases of Lilypond, both in terms of the overall use of white space and in the ability to make tweaks. I've read through your essay on the "Miss Manners" of music typesetting, and do understand the issues involved. Do you have some sample scores showing the same musical content printed with Sibelius, Finale, and Lilypond that would highlight some of these differences? Best regards The Uninvited Co., Inc. 21:50, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
First of all, "the first public release" was made long before the said essay. LilyPond now has improved a lot wrt. versions from then.
I don't own licenses to either Finale or Sibelius, so I can't provide you with any specific samples, but I've seen both in action. I think that pointing out weaknesses of other packages should not be done on the LilyPond page, but rather on the pages of said packages. I think it's better to point out what sets apart Lily, as this is more informative and more objective, eg
- optical scaling for font: depending on staff size, the design of the font is altered slightly. (This is a Feature that Knuth's Comupter Modern font is well known for too): note heads become rounder, and lines heavier.
- Optical spacing (see the essay), where stem directions are taken into account for spacing subsequent notes. Note that this is something different from the inaccurately named Optical (tm) Spacing feature of Sibelius.
- Proportional spacing, where allotted space is exactly equal to durations. No other packages support this out of the box. (you need a recent 2.7 lily, though)
- Ledger lines that never collide, but are shortened in tight situations.
- Stem directions on the center follow the directions of surrounding notes. (recent 2.7)
Also, in general, LilyPond does much better on automatically avoiding collisions for ties, slurs, articulation marks, nested tuplets, etc.. For example, if you add an arpeggio to a chord in Finale, Finale just parks it on top of the accidentals, you have to manually tweak things to look ok.
Han-Wen
--213.84.26.127 17:15, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] lilypond in a wiki
This articles features about "WikiTeX, a MediaWiki interface, supports editing LilyPond notation directly in wiki articles", but do you know LilySnap ? it's a plugin for the snipsnap wiki/blog engine, that allows integration of lilypond. Here it is : http://lilysnap.blogdns.net/space/LilySnap
[edit] GUI's
You note three free GUI programs that can export sheet music to LilyPond format; however, they are for Linux only. Should the fact be noted that no such programs exist for Windows or even for the Macintosh? Denelson83 06:39, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
- Of the three, Denemo will work with Macintosh OS X and, indeed, like LilyPond comes with Fink. However, its state of development at present does not leave something to be desired, but instead is absolutely rotten- Not Ready For Prime Time. Unless much has been improved with 0.7.1-11, the .ly files it produces don't contain a version number, crashes are regular experiences... better to just learn how to use LilyPond or for someone to write a proper GUI and adapt it for XDarwin, this still needs to be done after all. Schissel-nonLop! 03:56, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
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- The free software community is sometimes hostile towards commercial operationg systems, but many programs are offered in a Windows or Macintosh version. I'm one of those with friends in both camps: sort of like Bilbo between the dwarves and the elves. --Uncle Ed 16:55, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
