Re: Supporting my work on LilyPond financially

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On 01/12/13 09:45, David Kastrup wrote:
> Finale output is ugly to the degree where it is distracting readability,
> particularly for instrumentalists.  Sibelius' corporate parent has fired
> its core developer team in the UK, including its original authors.
> Steinberg does not yet have a finished product on market.  Most other
> players are fringe players.
>
> The situation is not really all that unfavorable for LilyPond.

The default output of Finale is indeed ugly, and I was reminded that Sibelius 
too has its problems when I recently received a score from a friend which would 
surely have looked much better done in Lilypond.

The thing is, though, both are so easy to tweak, it doesn't matter.  My 
Bärenreiter scores engraved (presumably) with Finale may be less beautiful than 
the obviously hand-engraved earlier publications, but they are entirely 
satisfactory so far as reading goes.  Most practical readability problems arise 
because of publishers (or composers) who put inadequate work into copyediting 
parts, not because of the software used.

I don't say this to discourage anyone, but just to note that what matters to the 
end user is very often the facility to get the score _just as they want it_, not 
the ability of the program to automatically second-guess their desires.