Re: [LAU] Notation: The State of the Mess

Grammostola Rosea wrote:

> Edit: another reason to learn lilypond is the fact that it is able to
> handle notation, drum notation and tablature. I think there is no
> notation editor on linux (with gui) which can do that.

I love LilyPond and notated several piano pieces with it. It is very
logical, very full-featured, and does produce beautiful scores.

However, I stopped trying to notate with LilyPond because of the absence
of one single feature--

In piano music and music for other polyphonic instruments, it is common,
in order to create a score that is less cluttered and easy to read, to
split a polyphonic voice (a voice that can contain chords instead of a
single note) into two or more voices, and to combine two or more voices
into a single voice. Sometimes this addition or subtraction of voices is
sudden and may last only a very brief time--perhaps not even a full measure.

The problem with this and LilyPond has to do with ties (tied notes).
When I used LilyPond (a couple years ago) it was very difficult and
required rather complex coding to make even a single tie extend from one
voice to another. When the complexity of voices that merge and split at
arbitrary times was added, it was virtually impossible to write LilyPond
code that would add the necessary ties between the identical notes in
other voices.

This one thing has been disappointing enough to me during these last
couple years to keep me away from LilyPond, although I have checked its
development from time to time. I volunteered to help sponsor (fund the
programming of) this feature several times, but neither other users nor
the lead developer, Han-Wen Nienhuys, responded to that suggestion,
although Han-Wen had incorporated some rather complex code regarding
ties that I had volunteered to sponsor some months earlier.

I think that LilyPond is an extraordinary, great program and that
Han-Wen is a brilliant programmer. However, if one's interest is in
notating polyphonic music, this issue becomes an obstacle that is
impossible to ignore and hard to work around.

However, all that said, I would be thrilled to be proven wrong. :-)

Steve
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Received on Mon Sep 8 00:15:02 2008