This is the toplevel README to LilyPond
***************************************

LilyPond is a music typesetter.  It produces beautiful sheet music using a high level description file as input.  LilyPond is part of the GNU Project.

Versioning
==========

LilyPond uses a versioning scheme similar to the Linux kernel.  In a version "x.y.z", an even second number 'y' denotes a stable version. For development versions 'y' is odd.  For using straightforward score production, please use the latest stable version.  Development versions may not produce good or nice scores.

Requirements
============

For the compilation and running of LilyPond you need some additional packages.  Please refer to the installation instructions.

NOTE: If you downloaded a binary (.rpm or a W95/NT .zip file), you don't have to compile LilyPond.

Installation
============

For your convenience, a formatted copy of the INSTALL instructions are in the toplevel directory, as INSTALL.txt

Documentation
=============

The real documentation is the directory Documentation/

If you want to read the documentation online, these are options:

  * use .html. Refer to INSTALL.txt for info on how to make the .html documentation.

  * use .html. Point your browser to http://www.cs.uu.nl/~hanwen/lilypond/index.html.

  * use .dvi,  for the tutorial and reference manual. Do

            make -C Documentation/tex/ dvi

  * use ASCII. Do using make -C Documentation/

Comments
========

LilyPond is a long way from finished and polished.  We do appreciate criticism, comments, bugreports, patches, etc.

     	   Please send your e-mail to one of the MAILING LISTS

and not to us personally.  See Documentation/mail.texi for more info.

Windows 32
==========

If you have received this file as part of a DOS/Window32 distribution (LilyPond-*.zip), it is advisable to also download the source package, since it might contain more documentation ftp://ftp.cs.uu.nl/pub/GNU/LilyPond/

If you decide to build LilyPond from source, please read the INSTALL.txt document first, especially the Windows NT/95 section.

Caveats
=======

If you have installed a previous version, be sure to remove old font files, eg.,

     rm `find /var/lib/texmf/fonts -name 'feta*'`

a script to do this for you is in buildscripts/clean-fonts.sh

Bugs
====

Send bug reports to bug-gnu-music@gnu.org.  For help and questions use help-gnu-music@gnu.org and gnu-music-discuss@gnu.org.  Please consult the FAQ and installation instructions before mailing your problems.

CDROM distributions
===================

If you have received LilyPond on a cdrom, chances are that development has moved some patchlevels up.  Please check the latest version of LilyPond before reporting bugs.