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.  Lily-
Pond is part of the GNU Project.

1: VERSIONING

LilyPond uses a versioning scheme similar to the Linux ker-
nel.  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.

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/

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

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

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

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

            make -C Documentation/tex/ dvi

o    use ASCII. Do using

               make -C Documentation/

     The tutorial and the reference manual  can not be made
     in ASCII, as they contain graphics.

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: WINDOWS 32

If you have received this file as part of a DOS/Window32
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.

* 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

8: BUGS

Send bug reports to bug-gnu-music@gnu.org.  For help and
questions use help-gnu-music@gnu.org and gnu-music-dis-
cuss@gnu.org.  Please consult the faq before mailing your
problems.

9: CDROM DISTRIBUTIONS

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