Upgrading (was: Staff "first" barline (before cleff))

[Laura Conrad]

>>>>> "MB" == Mats Bengtsson <address@hidden> writes:

    MB> I really recommend you to upgrade to the latest stable version 2.4.x
    MB> as soon as possible, since it has improved significantly compared to
    MB> 2.0. Also, since almost nobody on the mailing list uses 2.0, it will
    MB> be hard to get relevant answers.

I use it.  It isn't possible for me to switch to 2.4 (or 2.5 in its
current state) because abc2ly is broken in a major  way.  (It
fails to translate key signatures.)  

And my brief testing doesn't convince me that it's a lot better for my
purposes, even if it worked.  See
<http://www.laymusic.org/blosxom-static/publishing/> for pointers to
two pdf's with the same notes.   

Most of the differences are pretty subtle, but the change in
typography for the lyrics strikes you immediately.  I've been polling
my user community about which they like better, and nobody answers
immediately.  Certainly if the é in beauté really has an accent in the
2.5 version, it's less legible than the 2.0 version.  And in general,
the font is readable but not elegant.

I'm aware that there are some nifty new features since 2.0, which I
would like to use. However, it looks like lilypond may be expanding
features beyond the capacity of its development team to support them.
>From the standpoint of a long-time user on LINUX (I'm aware that the
judgement may be different for a new user on Windows), 2.0 has some
maturity that seems lacking in 2.5.

-- 
Laura (mailto:address@hidden , http://www.laymusic.org/ )
(617) 661-8097  fax: (501) 641-5011
233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139