Re: Supporting my work on LilyPond financially

[immanuel litzroth]

On Sun, Dec 1, 2013 at 12:32 PM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling <address@hidden> wrote:

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.

I follow a music education program that requires me to play in a combo 1 hour a week. The scores there are prepared

by paid professionals, usually in Sibelius. They are invariably late, and usually unreadable when they arrive.

Chords on top of each other, confusing spacing and layout, although they are normally just a melody (if even that) without

any articulation marks and some chords. 

If anyone is interested I can post some nice examples of the stuff I'm being given under the motto "Sightread That!".

It normally takes me 30 mins to redo them in lilypond and get something infinitely better.

The other bands I play in also usually have scores in lily written by me, the other guys mainly distribute some copies of handwritten 

stuff and are working on their Sibelius/Finale scores. I see no evidence of Sibelius/Finale being better in any sense than lily to actually 

produce scores.

Immanuel