1 @comment @c -*-texinfo-*-
3 @node Preface to version 1.8
4 @unnumbered Preface to version 1.8
6 The 1.8 release brings old thing, in new, flashier
7 clothes. Previously, the program used to have half-baked solutions to
8 various problems. In version 1.8, we took the good parts of the
9 solutions, threw away the bad code, and rebuilt the rest of the
10 formatting code. Version 1.8 has revamped support for
14 @item Entering normal chords
16 @item Storing music expressions
17 @item Manipulating identifiers and music
20 Version 1.8 is a preparation for version 2.0, which is expected to
21 follow 1.8 shortly. Version 2.0 will have a number of significant,
22 non-backwards-compatible changes in the input syntax.
24 Special thanks for version 1.8 go out to Juergen Reuter for lots of
25 work on the ancient notation engine, and to Amy Zapf for pushing to
26 rewrite chord name support
35 It must have been during a rehearsal of the EJE (Eindhoven Youth
36 Orchestra), somewhere in 1995 that Jan, one of the cranked violists
37 told Han-Wen, one of the distorted French horn players, about the
38 grand new project he was working on. It was an automated system for
39 printing music (to be precise, it was MPP, a preprocessor for
40 MusiXTeX). As it happened, Han-Wen accidentally wanted to print out
41 some parts from a score, so he started looking at the software, and he
42 quickly got hooked. It was decided that MPP was a dead end. After
43 lots of philosophizing and heated e-mail exchanges Han-Wen started
44 LilyPond in 1996. This time, Jan got sucked into Han-Wen's new
47 In some ways, developing a computer program is like learning to play
48 an instrument. In the beginning, discovering how it works is fun, and
49 the things you cannot do are challenging. After the initial excitement,
50 you have to practice and practice. Scales and studies can be dull, and
51 if you are not motivated by others---teachers, conductors or
52 audience---it is very tempting to give up. You continue, and gradually
53 playing becomes a part of your life. Some days it comes naturally, and
54 it is wonderful, and on some days it just does not work, but you keep
55 playing, day after day.
57 Like making music, working on LilyPond is can be dull work, and on
58 some days it feels like plodding through a morass of
59 bugs. Nevertheless, it has become a part of our life, and we keep
60 doing it. Probably the most important motivation is that our program
61 actually does something useful for people. When we browse around the
62 net we find many people that use LilyPond, and produce impressive
63 pieces of sheet music. Seeing that still feels unreal, but in a very
66 Our users not only give us good vibes by using our program, many of
67 them also help us by giving suggestions and sending bugreports. So
68 first and foremost, we would like to thank all users that sent us
69 bugreports, gave suggestions or contributed in any other way to
72 We would also like to thank the following people: Mats Bengtsson for
73 the incountable number of questions he answered on the mailing list,
74 and Rune Zedeler for his energy in finding and fixing bugs. Nicola
75 Bernardini for inviting us to his workshop on music publishing, which
76 was truly a masterclass, and Heinz Stolba and James Ingram for
79 Playing and printing music is more than nice analogy. Programming
80 together is a lot of fun, and helping people is deeply satisfying, but
81 ultimately, working on LilyPond is a way to express our deep love for
82 music. May it help you create lots of beautiful music!
86 Utrecht/Eindhoven, The Netherlands, July 2002.