TITLE INFORMATION: 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, named chords, transposing, formatting scores, 
part extraction.  It includes a nice font of musical symbols.

1: 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.

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 TeX 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 configure 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: 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: 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.