Never heard of you before, but what a discovery

[Arie Fokkens]

Dear developpers,

during a search for royaltyfree music, 
I stumbeled across your page with the Lilypond music engraver. 
I had seen some examples of free sheet music made this engraver, 
and I thought, this doesn't look bad, 
however I would have done thing a bit differtent at some places. 

But interested as I am in differtent music editors (I now use Finale),
 I have downloaded Lilypond and the manual, 
and started to read, did some of the examples, 
and was amazed by what this program can do!!!
I am a (amateur) composer myself and I sometimes use these 
'stupid' :=) things as beaming over barlines, 
feathered beaming over barlines, and other unusual notation. 
It is a great discovery that your software can just do all this.

Only one thing, I was a bit disppointed to 
have to program all my music by hand. 
Off course I know that it takes a lot of work, 
but maybe in the future you will be able to create a GUI 
for this excellent program.

I have allso some suggestions
During working on a project of a Dutch composer, 
(a very complex piece for organ), I found out that 
most music fonts were too wide. 
I could only fit 2 bars on a A4 oblong sheet of paper. 
This was not satisfatory for me. 
 I have then worked on a font which is much smaller, 
based on the fact that many times in handwriting, 
a notehead is often not much more than a small forward slash. 
So I tilted the notehead more and was then able to make a far 
more condensed score without losing readability. I now 
use this smaller and narrower font for all my music.

In the figured bass area, I noticed that the figuring is 
below the notes. Together with a musicologist 
I developped a font for figured base (for use in Finale), 
which is to be used on top of the notes. In fact 
this proved to be an easier way to read the figured bass line.

If you wish, I can provide you with a sample of this font.

I wish you very good luck with yor program.

Yours

Arie Fokkens