Re: Comparing LilyPond with Sibelius, Finale, Musescore etc

[Mats Bengtsson]

> I have been compiling some examples of LilyPond's typesetting compared
> with those of well-known alternatives:
>
> http://denemo.org/CompareScorewriters
>
> If anyone can provide better examples - these are just taken from
> published work that I could find with a quick search - then please let
> me know - especially if I am not doing LilyPond justice.
> My examples have a common origin in MusicXML files, but there may be
> some other way of standardizing the comparisons (short of re-typing
> music examples...).
>
> Richard
It's nice to have these comparisons, but I have a couple of comments:
- You should specify what the version number of the respective programs. 
Several of the similar comparisons that have been discussed earlier on 
the list, have been based on fairly old versions of Finale and Sibelius, 
which may be unfair.
- I really like that you point out that you are not fully certain how 
much tweaking was used in the original typesettings, but it would of 
course be even better to have example where you have this knowledge. If 
you search the mailing list archives, you should find several examples 
of similar comparisons and at least one or two of these included a 
fairly detailed comparison of the amount of tweaking that was needed for 
the different programs.
- In the Sibelius comparison, it's really a pity that you didn't include 
the correct lyrics. The alignment and layout of lyrics is clearly an 
important issue in music typesetting, so I don't agree with the comment 
that these are not important. In particular, it's a pity that they dummy 
lyrics you have inserted for the Denemo/LilyPond version doesn't use 
correct hyphens, i.e.
Lo -- rem ip -- sum
instead of
Lo- rem ip- sum
for example. The current example gives the false impression that 
Denemo/LilyPond isn't able to handle hyphens correctly.

Regards

    /Mats

--
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        Mats Bengtsson
        Signal Processing
        School of Electrical Engineering
        Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)
        SE-100 44  STOCKHOLM
        Sweden
        Phone: (+46) 8 790 8463                         
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