Toplevel README
***************

LilyPond is a music typesetter.  It produces beautiful sheet music using a description file as input.  LilyPond is part of the GNU Project.

Versioning
==========

LilyPond uses a versioning scheme that easily identifies stable and development releases.  In a version "x.y.z", an even second number 'y' denotes a stable version.  For development versions 'y' is odd.

Downloading
===========

The primary download site for sourcecode is http://lilypond.org/download/.

Compilation
===========

For compiling and running LilyPond see the installation instructions. These instructions can be found when you unpack lilypond, as lilypond-x.y.z/INSTALL.txt. They are also available on the web at http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.1/Documentation/topdocs/out-www/INSTALL.html.

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

The documentation is available online at http://www.lilypond.org/doc/.

You can also build it locally: follow the instructions under `Building documentation' in the installation instructions.

Comments
========

Send your criticism, comments, bugreports, patches, etc. to the mailing list, not to us personally.

We have the following mailing lists:

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

  * lilypond-devel@gnu.org (http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-devel) for discussions about developing LilyPond, in particular the unstable series.

  * lilypond-user@gnu.org (http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user) for discussions about using LilyPond, in particular the stable series.

  * bug-lilypond@gnu.org (http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-lilypond) for sending bugreports.

  * lilypond-cvs@gnu.org (http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-cvs) for commit messages from the CVS repository, and log files from the autobuild.

You can search the lists from our searching facilities (http://lilypond.org/search).

Bugs
====

Send bug reports to bug-lilypond@gnu.org.  For help and questions use lilypond-user@gnu.org.