Re: Lilypond lobbying?

[Joseph Wakeling]

On 08/25/2011 01:16 PM, David Kastrup wrote:
> Except when you are ordering orchestral scores for Monteverdi's Vespers,
> use Renaissance tuning that is usually a minor third off, play partly
> with historical instruments, practice with modern instruments and would
> like to have the choir scores transposed to be on pitch.
> 
> A good Lilypond source will require very little touchup work for pulling
> out the (expensive) custom order.

Yes, but that's not what I mean by an "individual custom tweak".  On a
score level, that's a large-scale stylistic change to the engraving,
which is the kind of thing that Lilypond does extremely well.

What I'm referring to is the myriad small changes that are needed when
preparing a score -- things like the precise placement of hairpins,
slurs, and other markings.

Take a score like this one by Alban Berg:
http://imslp.org/wiki/Special:ImagefromIndex/12907

... and look in the first movement alone to see how many hairpins and
dynamic marks have tiny customizations in their placement.  Now think
about the corresponding ease of doing that in Finale (drag/drop) and the
corresponding difficulty of doing that in Lilypond (custom code in every
case, and you need to rebuild each time to make sure you got the tweak
right).