suggestion about web page examples and essay

[Libero Mureddu]

Hi all,
following a recent discussion on the Reaper mailing list (in which I
had to defend Lilypond from a quite heavy critic due to a
misunderstanding of what Lily is and what Lily can do, but that's fine
and absolutely not the point of this email), I checked the example
page of the Lily's website and found some weak points in it IMO.

There are some broken links (png file linked incorrectly to the .mid
files), but, besides that, here is my suggestion about how to make it
better:

Divide the examples in three groups, each one clearly stating and
showing Lily's power:

a) Lilypond automatic output, un-tweaked (to show Lily's great
automatic layout features, that was/is the main goal to reach)

b) A simple set of (even heavily, if necessary) tweaked scores to show
the best that Lily can do (those could be the same scores of  point
"a)", or others. Let's call it "Ready to be printed".

c) Super-cool features (graphics, polymetric, proportional, early
music, etc.), with a finished page of a score (finished here means,
ready to print as in "b)".

Here's my suggested list for points a) and b):

- solo music (ex, Bach cello suite)
- song (1 staff with melody, lyrics and chords) (Gershwin? Porter? )
- Late classic/Romantic piano example, with fingerings etc.
(Beethoven?/Chopin etude?)
- Full orchestral score, with one part extracted (and thus showing the
POV - Power Of Variables :-).
 (first version of Stravinski Petrouchka?).

(all those with midi files)

Suggestion for point c)
- Monteverdi's madrigal,
- Score à la Ferneyhough
- Score à la Nancarrow/Ligeti
- Graphic score with a lot of Postscript stuff
- Book (like "L'art de toucher le clavecin")

The point is to keep the same honesty towards the user (check my
comment about Sibelius contemporary notation features, based on
Sibelius 2, don't know nowadays...), to show that with few tweaks the
result is top class, and, why not, to be more appealing to new users
(if they come from Sibelius / Finale etc).

Side-note, but connected with Lily, somehow: there's more and more
interest about audio in Linux, recently thanks to Reaper/wine (check
the forum and some Dave Phillips articles about), with a lot of
Windows-Mac users(without any background about open source)  charmed
by Reaper's development/price attitude (very similar to open source
attitude, but what Reaper is creating is big and complex - in the
professional DAW world - , so please no open vs closed war, it's not
my point).
In few days both MuseScore and Denemo have been tested by many people
(with not such a positive feedback, to be honest, due to crash and/or
missing of some basic functionalities), but still something is really
going on there!
-----------
I have some small critics towards the "essay", just because it's
referring to Finale 2003 (BTW the last version I used, then I switched
for a year and half to Sibelius and then completely to Lilypond).
I don't know about newer versions of Finale, but referring to such a
old version is not really useful anymore, and, without offending
anybody (I have such a high respect towards Lilypond, its authors and
its community), I think that nowadays Lilypond it's just so good and
completely different by itself, that doesn't need this kind of
comparison. I mean, Lily is far from the others on many many features
(and weak on others).
Anyway, I think that the essay should be at least changed in those
parts that are referring to old Finale.


Of course I'm not just trowing a stone here and hiding my hand here
(italian motto... :-), that means that I'm ready to take the time and
effort to work on the points I suggested (clearly with the help of
others), if there's an interest!
What do you think?

(here's the reaper discussion thread):
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=22675

Ciao

Libero
-- 
Libero Mureddu
Vanha Viertotie, 21 as 417
00350 Helsinki
Finland
http://webusers.siba.fi/~limuredd/
http://www.myspace.com/liberomureddu