2 This is the toplevel README to LilyPond
4 LilyPond is the GNU Project music typesetter. This program
5 can print beautiful sheet music from a music definition
6 file. It can also play mechanical performances to a MIDI
7 file. Features include multiple staffs, meters, clefs,
8 keys, lyrics, versatile input language, cadenzas, beams,
9 slurs, triplets, named chords, transposing, formatting
10 scores, part extraction. It includes a nice font of musical
15 LilyPond uses a versioning scheme similar to the Linux ker-
16 nel. In a version "x.y.z", an even second number 'y'
17 denotes a stable version. For development versions 'y' is
18 odd. For using straightforward score production, please use
19 the latest stable version. Development versions may not
20 produce good or nice scores.
22 If you have downloaded a
26 version, then this is version is *not* meant for producing
27 nice output (but to keep your patchsets up to date). It
28 might not even compile. The same goes for a version with a
29 4th version number, eg
33 It will be safer if you download 1.2.3 or wait for 1.2.4.
37 For the compilation and running of LilyPond you need some
38 additional packages. Please refer to the installation
41 NOTE: If you downloaded a binary (.rpm or a W95/NT .zip
42 file), then you don't have to compile LilyPond.
46 For your convenience, a formatted copy of the INSTALL
47 instructions are in the toplevel directory, as INSTALL.txt
49 The process is fairly straightforward, but chances are that
50 you have to specify directories for to configure: this is
51 done with the options --enable-tex-dir and --enable-mf-dir
55 The real documentation is the directory Documentation/
57 To generate the pretty-printed docs, you have to run config-
58 ure first, and then do this:
62 You can also simply read the .yo sources. They are ASCII
63 text. The complete documentation is accessible in formatted
64 form at the website http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/hanwen/lily-
69 LilyPond is a long way from finished and polished. We do
70 appreciate criticism, comments, bugreports, patches, etc.
72 Please send your e-mail to one of the MAILING LISTS
74 and not to us personally. See Documentation/links.yo for
79 If you have received this file as part of a DOS/Window32
80 distribution (lilypond-*.zip), then it is advisable to also
81 download the source package, since it might contain more
82 documentation ftp://ftp.cs.uu.nl/pub/GNU/LilyPond/
84 If you decide to build LilyPond from source, please read the
85 INSTALL.txt document first, especially the Windows NT/95
90 * Please read the file BUGS for some ugly bugs. This espe-
91 cially applies Linux-Intel unix users.
93 * If you have installed a previous version, be sure to
94 remove old font files, eg
96 rm `find /var/lib/texmf/fonts -name 'feta*'`
98 a script to do this for you is in buildscripts/clean-
101 8: CDROM DISTRIBUTIONS
103 If you have received LilyPond on a cdrom, chances are that
104 development has moved a some patchlevels up. If possible,
105 please check the latest version of LilyPond before reporting