feasibilty question: simple GUI for web-based Lilypond instance

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi all,

I’m teaching a musical theatre creation course at a college. I’ve been teaching 
the course for about 4 years, but the philosophy recently changed from one 
where I was a co-creator with the students (and hence did all of the engraving 
for our collaborative songs) to a more traditional instructor-student setup 
(where the students are now expected to generate their own scores).

The ~25 students in the class need to engrave their own music; but they’re 
starving students/artists, and we aren’t going to ask them to buy licenses for 
any engraving app. (Of course, if they already have something, or evolve to the 
point they need to buy one, that would be up to them!)

Looking at the ecosystem of “free” music engraving applications (e.g., 
NoteFlight, MuseScore, Dorico SE), I realise that what is really lacking is a 
web-accessible engraving application with a [Javascript?] GUI, capable of 
generating reasonably simple but attractive scores of relatively limited 
complexity (e.g., piano-vocal scores with chords) and supporting collaborative 
editing over the network — think lilybin.com with a GUI. Especially given how 
much education has moved — and will likely now remain — online, I see this gap 
as a real opportunity to potentially promote Lilypond in education.

How difficult would it be to build a “Quick Note Entry” GUI that could work on 
a served copy of Lilypond?

Thanks,
Kieren.
________________________________

Kieren MacMillan, composer (he/him/his)
‣ website: www.kierenmacmillan.info
‣ email: kieren@kierenmacmillan.info