Re: free LilyPond advertising

[Joseph Wakeling]

till wrote:
>  I was just wondering what is it then that you like so much in Finale? You
> said both are good, but for different things. What is this thing? Is it that
> it is easier to correct typesetting errors in Finale?

Another third-party view ....  What makes Finale and Sibelius nice in
many situations is that they are not just notation tools but
_composition_ tools, which allow you to enter into a dialogue between
notation, playback and performance.  As a result, it tends to smooth the
passage between experimental and sketching stages of composition and
producing the final score.  Lilypond is more suitable for a case where
you already know precisely what you want to notate.

To take an example, recently I was working with a friend on some songs:
I used Rosegarden to sketch out the notes and rhythms and to play around
with some ideas we wanted tested, and then later used Lilypond to
produce the final notation.  With Finale, a step would have been removed
in that process.

Further benefits of Finale/Sibelius: you can concern yourself purely
with what the score looks like and not have to worry about the
underlying data structures (this is a disadvantage sometimes, too); typo
spotting and correction is indeed easier (the close relationship with
playback helps here); and it's much easier to be very precise with the
visuals of your notation.  I'm very, very fussy about the precise
placement of dynamic marks and other such notation and this is
non-trivial with Lilypond.

Of course, Lilypond has some BIG advantages.  For example, what other
notation program can understand and logically and correctly interpret a
7/10 time signature?  Perhaps not a big issue for a lot of people, but
it does say a lot about the power and flexibility of Lilypond's data
structures.

    -- Joe