Re: Key and accidentals in Lilypond

[Mats Bengtsson]

s.abeccara wrote:
> Dear David,
>
> thank you for your reply, it is helpful and understandable. Your
> suggestion to use ABC sounds good. Could you give me an URL to it?

Take a look at http://www.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/
Strangely enough, abc2ly is not mentioned there,
see http://mstation.org/notate.html

> Now I see the point in Lilypond needing explicit alterations on notes.
> Some of the replies I got were discouraging for a newcomer in this
> field, while being not clear enough. Like, after all, the Lilypond
> manual. Which, to me, is uncomplete and lacks good, workable examples
> for some basic features of written music (e.g.: how do I write tempo
> notation in a piece? How do I change fonts? How do I align lyrics
> extending over long groups of notes?), while expanding on very complex
> and refined matters. 

Yes, writing a good manual is, in many aspect, a more challenging task
than to implement the actual software. We appreciate any hints on what
can be improved. However, the list of "basic features" would be
extremely long if it was complete. One good source of information,
in addition to the manual itself is the collection of small examples
found on the web page in
http://lilypond.org/stable/input/test/out-www/test.html
and
http://lilypond.org/stable/input/regression/out-www/regression.html
All the source files for these examples should also be included in
the installation (at least if you installed the Lilypond package in
RedHat, Debian or Cygwin), probably somewhere in 
/usr/doc/lilypond/input/ or /usr/share/doc/lilypond/input/.
There, you will also find a set of template files for common tasks.

> The output of Lilypond is a mint, its capabilities are great, but I
> think one has to pay a bit too much to get them working. Maybe
> something could be made easier, or explained more clearly? Anyway I
> think I'm going to try Noteedit or Rosegarden, maybe they could 
> save me some hassle.

My guess is that you soon will discover that it is easier and
faster to input the Lilypond files directly.

  /Mats