This  is the toplevel README to LilyPond LilyPond is the GNU
Project music typesetter.  This program can print  beautiful
sheet  music from a music definition file.  It can also play
mechanical performances to a MIDI  file.   Features  include
multiple  staffs,  meters,  clefs,  keys,  lyrics, versatile
input language, cadenzas, beams, slurs, triplets, formatting
scores, part extraction.  It includes a nice font of musical
symbols.

1: VERSIONING

     if you have downloaded a *.pre* version, then  this  is
version  is  *not*  meant  for producing nice output (but to
keep your patchsets up to date).  It might not even compile.
The  same  goes  for a version with a 4th version number, eg
1.2.3.mypatch2 It will be safer if  you  download  1.2.3  or
wait for 1.2.4.

2: 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), then you don't have to compile  LilyPond.

3: INSTALLATION

     For  your  convenience, a formatted copy of the INSTALL
instructions are in the toplevel directory,  as  INSTALL.txt
The  process is fairly straightforward, but chances are that
you have to specify directories for  to configure:  this  is
done with the options --enable-tex-dir and --enable-mf-dir

4: DOCUMENTATION

     The  real documentation is the directory Documentation/
To generate the pretty-printed docs, you have to run config-
ure  first,  and  then do this: make doc You can also simply
read the .yo sources.  They are ASCII  text.   The  complete
documentation is accessible in formatted form at the website
http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/hanwen/lilypond/index.html

5: 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/links.yo for more info.

6: DOZE

     If you have received this file as part  of  a  DOS/Win-
dow32 distribution (lilypond-*.zip), then 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.

7: CAVEATS

     * Please read the file BUGS for some ugly  bugs.   This
especially  applies  Linux-Intel  unix users.  * 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 bin/cleanfonts.sh


8: CDROM DISTRIBUTIONS


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