This is the toplevel README to LilyPond		-*-Text-*-


LilyPond is the GNU Project music typesetter.  The program generates
visual or auditive output from a music definition file: it can typeset
formatted sheet music to a TeX file and play (mechanical) performances
to a MIDI file.  Features include multiple staffs, meters, clefs,
keys, lyrics, versatile input-language, cadenzas, beams, slurs,
triplets.


1. VERSIONING

if you have downloaded a

	*.pre*

version, then this is version is *not* meant for producing nice output
(but to keep your patchsets up to date). It might not even compile.


2. REQUIREMENTS

For the compilation and running of LilyPond you need some additional
packages. The most unusual one of this are the metafont sources to
MusixTeX-fonts. Please refer to the installation instructions on how
to obtain and install them.


3. INSTALLATION

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


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 .pod sources. They are ASCII text. 
.pod is the documentation format of perl (see perlpod(1))


5. COMMENTS

LilyPond is a long way from finished and polished.  I do appreciate
criticism, comments, bugreports, patches, etc.  Please send e-mail to
the mailing lists.  See Documentation/links.pod for more info


6. DOZE

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://pcnov095.win.tue.nl/pub/lilypond/ (Europe)
	ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/lilypond/ (US)

The website also contains the complete documentation

	http://www.stack.nl/~hanwen/lilypond/index.html

If you decide to build LilyPond from source, please read the INSTALL
document first, especially the Windows NT/95 section.

7. CAVEATS

* Please read the file BUGS for some ugly bugs.  This especially applies
Linux-Intel unix users.

* 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 bin/cleanfonts.sh