Re: problems with learning lilypond

[Reinhold Kainhofer]

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Am Samstag, 22. November 2008 schrieb Johan Vromans:
> Every piece of music is different. Very often I am surprised that
> LilyPond *can* actually achieve something wierd that I had in mind.
> I'm pretty sure many of the 'user friendly' point-n-click tools are
> quire limited, I have yet to find one of LP's limits[1].
[...]
> [1] Maybe how to add lyrics to a partcombined section?

I agree.
However, I've run into some of LilyPond's limits while trying to typeset 
full-orchestra scores with choir/soloists. Here's my list of showstoppers for 
full orchestral scores, sorted in decending order of importance to me:

- -) You can't attach lyrics to cue notes!!!

- -) The vertical page layout:
    o) The page is not filled (even with stretching) if there is only 1 system
    o) Each page is layed out separately, so that the staff for one instrument
        continues at a completely different position on the next page. This 
        makes reading full scores (and trying to follow one instrument) while
        conducting almost impossible

- -) partcombine in general: It's very aggressive and as such noch suitable for 
full scores: it combines even single notes so that at worst each note in a 
measure will get "a2", "Solo", "a2", "Solo", for example if you do 
        { \partcombine \relative c'{ d4 r d r } \relative c'{d4 g d g } }
partcombine will also never create a note with two stems, but rather always 
combine it to one note. Also, in printed scores, part-combination is mostly 
done on a measure-base rather than per note.

- -) You can't have different stretching for the different groups (in 
particular, the staves inside the group will be spaced equally to the spacing 
between the groups).

- -) Moving dynamics inside the staff can only be done via some nasty hacks

- -) Two-column layout for text (preface, notes, etc.) and automatic hyphenation

- -) partcombine does not work with lyrics

- -) Cross-staff chorded notes (important for the piano reduction and organ 
scores like Vierne's Messe Solenelle!)

If these are solved/implemented, then I think LilyPond is also perfect for 
typesetting full orchestral scores in print quality. Of course I might miss 
something, but so far I haven't been able to fix any of those (without some 
large coding in LilyPond's source code.

Cheers,
Reinhold
- -- 
- ------------------------------------------------------------------
Reinhold Kainhofer, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
email: address@hidden, http://reinhold.kainhofer.com/
 * Financial and Actuarial Mathematics, TU Wien, http://www.fam.tuwien.ac.at/
 * K Desktop Environment, http://www.kde.org, KOrganizer maintainer
 * Chorvereinigung "Jung-Wien", http://www.jung-wien.at/
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