HowardGilbert wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I appologise if mentioning Lilypond on this list is heresy.
>
> I'd be most interested to hear from anyone who's tried it (preferably using
> unix/Linux OS) giving a brief outline of it's pros & cons versus PMX - MusiXTeX.
My lilypond experience doesn't exceed my activity as the maintainer of
the lilypond musical terms glossary and the typesetting of a few scores.
I would tend to conclude that among the pros are the independency of
some MusiXTeX and/or pmx limitations (e.g. max number of staves per
score and xtuplets with equal length notes only). Among the cons are
very limited typesetter influence on number of pages/staves and
linebreaks. An important difference is that while musixtex and friends
are relatively stable and reliable lilypond for a long time has been
under heavy development. That is not said to blame lilypond the scope of
which is broader than the typesetting aspect. Personally I find the
scripting of a lilypond score much more complicated than that of a
mtx/pmx score. To me an mtx source file is much 'closer' to the
resulting score than a lilypond ditto and thus more easy to proof read
and correct.
When it comes to evaluating the quality of the typesetting result I
don't think it would be fair to state pros and cons because that depends
on your personal taste. Personally I like the overall graphic look of
MusiXTeX/pmx a little better than that of lilypond.
--
Christian Mondrup, Computer Programmer
Scandiatransplant, Skejby Hospital, University Hospital of Aarhus
Brendstrupgaardsvej, DK 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark
Phone: +45 89 49 53 01
