@node Introduction
@chapter Introduction

LilyPond is a free program that produces high quality sheet music.

The features that set LilyPond apart from other music printing
programs are

@itemize
@item Freely available under terms of the GNU GPL
@item Carefully designed music font
@item Lots of music formatting knowledge
@item Sophisticated formatting functions
@item Output is  configurable using Scheme
@item Highly modular design
@item Semantic input format
@item Input can be generated, inspected and modified via builtin Scheme
 interpreter.
@item Runs on both Unix and MS Windows
@item Multiple output formats
@item Easily embed musical fragments in LaTeX, Texinfo and HTML documents.
@item Works as a compiler: edit input in your favorite text editor
@end itemize

If you need to print out existing arrangements, composition, new
editions, or musical excercises, then LilyPond will suit you.
LilyPond is not interactive, and is probably not suited for creating
new compositions.

@menu
* Why LilyPond::		
* The Feta Font::		
* Engraving::			
* Semantic input format::	
* A programming approach::	
* About this manual::		
* Bug reports::			
* Web site::			
@end menu

@node Why LilyPond
@section Why LilyPond

LilyPond originally started out as an interesting hobby
project. Intrigued by music notation we set out to write a program to
produce high-quality music printouts, with minimal user intervention.

Engraving, the art of printing music is a very complex craftmanship,
that tries to make a typographically beautiful rendering of a piece of
music.  The purpose of nicely engraved music is to ease the way music
is read.  The typographical decisions have underlying logic, and to us
scientists, this begs the question: what is this logic, and can we
cast this logic into the more concrete form a computer program.

LilyPond is our concrete answer to this question, but besides being an
interesting hobby project, it also allows people that don't know much
about notation and engraving to print fine sheet music.

With LilyPond, we hope to give back a little to the Free Software
Community that gave us so much, and if possible, give people the
opportunity to publish sheet music with high quality layout.  In our
utopic vision, some day LilyPond will help create more beautiful music.

@node  The Feta Font
@section The Feta Font


Most of the rules concerning music symbols have not been explicitly
laid down, so we have imitated the looks of symbols in beautiful hand
engraved music. The starting point was to have a strong, bold look,
with rounded symbol shapes, just like traditional engraving.

@iftex
  {\font\fet=feta20 at 100pt
  \fet\fetaquartrest\hskip 1cm\fetahalfhead\hskip 1cm\fetaflat}
@end iftex

In the figure above, a few notable glyphs are shown. For example, in
most music the half-notehead is not elliptic but diamond shaped.  The
stem of a flat symbol should be slightly brushed, i.e. becoming wider
at the top. Fine endings, such as the one on the bottom of the quarter
rest, should not end in sharp points, but rather in rounded shapes.

Finally, the blackness of the font is carefully tuned to give a strong
and dark visual impression. Many computer music fonts are rather
light, leading to anemic look when they are printed.

Although such details are not directly visible to the untrained eye,
careful attention to such details gives lilypond output a more
balanced appearance.  We believe that the Feta font is among the most
elegant music font designs available today.

The Feta font was implemented in the font design system METAFONT. The
source code includes numerous comments on the specific design
considerations of each glyph. PostScript Type1 versions of the font
are also available.

@node Engraving
@section Engraving


Music engraving used to be a craft requiring many years of training.
In the old days, sheet music was made by cutting and stamping the
music mirrored into zinc or pewter plates. The plate would be inked,
and the depressions caused by the cutting and stamping would hold ink
thus forming an positive image.

Of all craftmanships, engraving was the most difficult to learn trade;
completing the basic training took as long as six years.
Unfortunately, little of this knowledge comes to us as explicitly
formulated rules.

The only books that specifically deal with music typography are the
books by Ross, Wanske and Hader @cite{hader48,ross,wanske}, and we
have found that are often lacking in detail. Of course, in order to
accurately computerize a process, one has to have a very detailed
description of what must be done.

@lilypond
    \score { \notes {
      c'4 e''4 e'4 b'4 |
      \property Staff.NoteSpacing \override #'stem-spacing-correction
      = #0.0
      \property Staff.StaffSpacing \override #'stem-spacing-correction
      = #0.0
      c'4 e''4 e'4 b'4 |      
    }
    \paper { linewidth = -1. } }
@end lilypond

@node Semantic input format
@section Semantic input format

One the key points of LilyPond, is that the input is musical: what you
put into the program are musical concepts, such as pitches, durations,
voices, etc.  The program then interprets these concepts, and produces
graphic output: glyphs, curves, offsets.  In this way the program
tries to act like an engraver. 


If you only want to print music, this might not interest you so much,
except for the fact that it means you don't have to worry much about
formatting details.


Many music encodings exist today @cite{selfridge-field97:beyond-midi},
but most of the encodings have not been tailored either for human use,
or for processing it with a computer.  By its nature, LilyPond input
has both features: it is concise, suitable for human input, and it can
be processed automatically: it may be converted into MIDI or into print.


However, one big problem with music, is that there are no standards
for encoding music. Sure, you can record performances using MIDI, but
that offers far too little information for adequate musicological
purposes. With LilyPond we've taken a reverse approach: we have tried
to come up with musical format that can cater virtually all music as
long as it can be notated.

LilyPond input focuses on musical concepts such as pitch, duration and
music expressions.  Musical data is rhythmic, and implies an ordering
of events. This ordering is used to create compound musical concepts:
Large musical structures are built recursively from smaller
expressions: a sequence of music expressions forms a new, longer and
bigger music expression. In this sense, the input is recursive. It
shares this property with very music encodings. The recursive nature
will appeal to the more hackerish musician.


@node A programming approach
@section A programming approach

blabla

@node  About this manual
@section About this manual

blabla


@node Bug reports
@section Bug reports

@cindex bugs
@cindex reporting bugs


Since there is no finder's fee which doubles every year, there is no
need to wait for the prize money to grow. So send a bug report today!

LilyPond development moves quickly, so if you have a problem, it is
wise to check if it has been fixed in a newer release.  If you think
you found a bug, please send in a bugreport.  When you send us a
bugreport, we have to diagnose the problem and if possible, duplicate
it.  To make this possible, it is important that you include the
following information in your report:

@itemize @bullet

@item A sample input which causes the error.  Please have mercy on the
developers, send a @emph{small} sample file.

@item The version number of lilypond.

@item A description of the platform you use (i.e., operating system,
system libraries, whether you downloaded a binary release)

@item If necessary, send a description of the bug itself.  If you
include output a ly2dvi run, please use @code{--verbose} option of
ly2dvi.

@end itemize

You can send the report to @email{bug-lilypond@@gnu.org}. This is a
mailinglist, but you don't have to be subscribed to it to post.


@node Web site
@section Web site

If you are reading this manual in print, it is possible that the
website contains updates to the manual. You can find the lilypond
website at @uref{http://www.lilypond.org/}.