Re: Lilypond lobbying?

[Joseph Wakeling]

On 08/25/2011 01:41 PM, Janek Warchoł wrote:
> Yes.  I hate to say it, but in the matter of tweaking slurs LilyPond
> sucks really hard compared to Finale.

I don't think this is really a helpful way of looking at it, to be honest.

Lilypond is a _superb_ piece of software that has the widest support for
diverse musical notation of any program I've come across.  Its creators
have developed an extremely well-thought-out syntax for computer
representation of musical notation and meaning, and an extremely
powerful engine to transform that syntax into attractive output.

However, there's very often with software (or any tools) a tradeoff
between functionality and ease of use, and Lilypond's focus is very much
on the former.  What that means in practice is that Lilypond solves some
problems better than others.

So, for example, it's great at getting most things right _without_
manual intervention.  It's great at correctly aligning music and lyrics.
 It's excellent at implementing global stylistic rules, and at
supporting unusual but logical notations in a natural way (try asking
Lilypond for a 7/10 time signature, for example, or a tuplet that
crosses a barline).  It fits wonderfully into the workflow of
algorithmic composers, and supports many contemporary notations far more
readily than Finale or Sibelius.  I don't have experience with world or
ancient music notations, but my impression is that its support here is
excellent as well.  And, of course, it's highly extensible, possibly
more so than any other music package.

By contrast Finale solves better issues of easy data entry, tweaking,
playback, integration with other media types such as video, and so on.
That means it solves better the key problems from the point of view of
most professional engravers/publishers.  But once you get beyond a
certain class of notations, Finale's support becomes limited and relies
more and more often on cheats and workarounds.

It would be very nice if Lilypond could make some usability advances,
and become easier to tweak.  But it might come at the cost of progress
on the kind of things that really make Lilypond valuable.