“Obsessed with putting ink on paper”
What is behind LilyPond?
LilyPond is not unique in making music notation: there are a lot of
programs that print music, and nowadays most of the newly printed
music is made with computers. Unfortunately, that also shows: just
ask any musician that plays classical music: new scores do not look as
nice as old ones.
What is the difference between hand-work and machine work, and what has caused it? How can we improve the situation? This essay explains problems in music notation (software), and our approach to solving them.
Table of contents
- Introduction: what's wrong with computer music notation.
- What's wrong with software, or how Finale is not the end-all of music software.
- How not to design software, or: modeling music notation.
- Divide and conqueror, A blue print for automated notation.
- Impressive, but does it also work in theory? A practical approach to capturing notation.
- Music engraving, the art of printing music.
- Implementing typography: hackers attack the engraving problem.
- A flexible program architecture lets us write engraving software
- Beautiful numbers: how LilyPond participates in the Miss World contests.
- Notation benchmarking: is a flexible architecture enough?
- Typographical features unique to LilyPond.
- Input format: how to enter music.
- Conclusion