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. _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
