I've looked at Lilypond several times over the years, but (perhaps because of an early and rather painful experience with MusicTeX in about 1994) I have never tried using it. I have for the last ten years or so used Sibelius, first on Acorn machines and now on Windows, but the cost (I've spent more money on its various versions than all other software I've ever bought combined) and the fact that it doesn't run under Linux makes me eager to use something else.
Up to now, the reason I stuck to Sibelius was the combination of its excellent (and ever-improving) user interface, its high quality output, and the ability to enter music quickly and accurately via keyboard. While Lilypond doesn't have a GUI, I'm impressed by the recent development of Rosegarden, and alternative means of getting input from a MIDI keyboard. Indeed at this moment I'm taking a break from struggling to get my Midisport USB box to work under Linux so I can finally use my MIDI keyboard with Linux and try some of this stuff out. Anyway, I read your essay on typesetting, and it seemed to me that comparing Lilypond with Finale is a bit unfair. I have never used Finale, but it seems (however it is marketed) to be very much a second-tier product compared to Sibelius (which is not unreasonable, as it's cheaper as well as giving lower quality output). Hence I'd be much more impressed by a comparison showing how Lilypond is better than the latest version of Sibelius (one reason they've consistently managed to get me to part with large sums of money is that new versions repeatedly make improvements, not as bells and whistles, but to basic things such as note input, the note spacing algorithm &c.; the recent Sibelius 3 features their second completely new note spacing algorithm). OK, perhaps none of the Lilypond authors can afford it in order to make a comparison...! Anyway, I'm very glad that Lilypond is trying to do for music what TeX did for text, and I might well end up using it, because I don't use Sibelius frequently enough to justify the continual expense of upgrades, not to mention the reboot into Windows... -- http://www.mupsych.org/~rrt/ | What you don't know controls you _______________________________________________ Bug-lilypond mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-lilypond
