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.  LilyPond is part of the GNU Project.

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.  Sh, in theory, version 1.2 is stable, which means that there are no glaring errors in it. In practice 1.2.x is also unmaintained.

1.3.x is in healthy development: lots of problems turn up, but they're fixed quickly. Therefore we recommend you try 1.2.x, if you have any problem with it, upgrade to the latest 1.3.x release.

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), you don't have to compile LilyPond.

Installation
============

For your convenience, a formatted copy of the INSTALL instructions are in the toplevel directory, as INSTALL.txt

Documentation
=============

The real documentation is the directory Documentation/

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

  * use HTML. Refer to INSTALL.txt for information on how to make the HTML documentation.

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

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

            make -C Documentation/user/ dvi

     You need a working LilyPond binary to create the DVI and HTML sources.

  * use ASCII. Do using make doc

Comments
========

LilyPond is a long way from finished and polished.  We do appreciate criticism, comments, bugreports, patches, etc., but please,

     	   Please send your e-mail to one of the MAILING LISTS

and not to us personally. We have the following mailing lists:

  * info-gnu-music@gnu.org (http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu-music) is a low-volume list for information on the GNU Music project. This list is moderated; ask David R. Linn or Han-Wen to send announcements for this list.

  * help-gnu-music@gnu.org (http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnu-music) For help with using LilyPond.

  * bug-gnu-music@gnu.org (http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-gnu-music) If you have bugreports, you should send them to this list.

Windows 32
==========

If you have received this file as part of a DOS/Window32 distribution (LilyPond-*.zip), 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.

Caveats
=======

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

Bugs
====

Send bug reports to bug-gnu-music@gnu.org.  For help and questions use help-gnu-music@gnu.org and gnu-music-discuss@gnu.org.  Please consult the FAQ and installation instructions before mailing your problems.

CDROM distributions
===================

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