Re: Is Lilypond right for me?

[Graham Percival]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2003 14:07:02 -0600 (CST)
Alexander Basson <address@hidden> wrote:
> I'm wondering -- will Lilypond allow me to combine math and music
> typesetting into a single document?  Can I install and use it on my Mac
> (again, running OS X)?  Do I need a different TeX implementation?

Lilypond is excellent for integrating music with LaTeX documents (which includes
plain text, simple equations, horribly complicated equations, scientific
articles, etc).  It can run on OS X -- have a look at fink (IIRC it's
fink.sourceforge.net).

However, Lilypond isn't extremely easy to learn, and as far as I know, you
can't use TeXShop as a front end.  If you're currently TAing the course, then
I'm not certain if you could learn enough Lilypond and LaTeX (manual latex,
that is, rather than using a front-end) to get much course materials ready.  It
depends on how much thesis work you need to do.  :)
If you plan on TAing for that course in the future, or other similar courses,
then I highly recommend Lilypond.  If you have enough time and patience to
sit down with the manuals, Lilypond is fantastic.  But I don't think you can
use it as a quick fix to whip up some assignments to hand out to your class
in two hours.  :)

Cheers,
- Graham