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I'm not denying that Lilypond is harder to learn.

When I've used Lilypond, I haven't composed directly in it. I write the music on paper first, and then transfer it over.

There was another interesting use I had for Lilypond, though. I was writing a program that generated music automatically, and I found it very useful to have the program output Lilypond format, which was then converted to MIDI. In this way, Lilypond served well as a standardized syntax for music notation.

Similarly, when I've used LaTeX for math-heavy papers, I generally wrote the equations out by hand, and then typed them in.

Of course, it's always up to you to choose whatever tools you want. Unless, of course, someone is forcing you to use something, which is what I really have a problem with.

I'm using Sibelius 5.0 and happy with it so far.

There is MuseScore . It's a work in progress (currently at version 0.9.4), but has experimental support for importing and exporting LilyPond files. It also produces decent notation in its own right (it uses the same fonts as LilyPond).

Thanks, I wasn't aware of this project.

The primary advantage of Lilypond, though, is not the fonts. It's the layout algorithms.

I see Lilypond has MusicXML support. I believe Finale can export in this format. Has anyone tried exporting an XML file from Finale and importing it into Lilypond???

I think it's still a work-in-progress, but please try it and let us know! Or, if you send me a MusicXML file, I could try it and post the results.

MuseScore's algorithms are supposed to follow similar principles . But since any WYSIWIG editor has to render the display in realtime, I suspect LilyPond will always be a step ahead...

I downloaded and installed Lilypond. I saved one of my smaller notation files as an XML and dragged that into the Lilypond icon. I'm not sure if I got anything. There was a text file in my MY Documents folder, but it was full of errors. I then went looking for Lilypond documentation on how to import XML files and not finding it gave up. The Lilypond layout algorithms may yield very nice output, but I can do work with Finale. It may also have a steep learning curve, but having been on this boat for a decade and a half I've done almost everything at least once.

BTW, this is an example of my beef with open source software. Software is subject to the 80/20 rule. You can get 80% of the functionality with 20% of the effort. The last 20% of functionality, the stability and additional features, take 80% of the effort. In the open source paradigm nobody is getting paid so that last 80% of the work doesn't usually get done. This is why Audacity simply doesn't compare to any commercial DAW software (and never will).

Is that how you run the convertor? I would doubt it.

You probably didn't look hard enough. When I looked at the LilyPond documentation, I found it immediately under "Application Usage"->"Converting from other formats"->"musicxml2ly". I would try it myself, but I don't have any MusicXML files.

Well, this discussion is about LilyPond, not Audacity (and the goal of Audacity was never to replace commercial software, but rather to experiment with a sound processing language). I could say the same thing about proprietary software. That is, 20% of the functionality never gets implemented because it just doesn't sell better, regardless of how important it is. Also, if there is a feature that is missing from LilyPond, you could offer them some money and see how quickly it gets added.

But it's totally up to you if you'd rather use Finale.

I found some MusicXML files here: http://www.musicxml.org/xml/samples.html

I took one of them and tried running it through LilyPond. It actually worked pretty well. As expected, the output will require some hand-tweaking, but the text output of musicxml2ly looks quite legible. Here are the PDFs:

LilyPond: http://mkorman.org/MozaChloSample.pdf
Finale: http://www.musicxml.org/xml/samples/MozaChloSample.pdf

Both of them look good to me. The music output from Lilypond looks marginally better, but I don't like the font for the vocal text (something which can obviously be adjusted). This is a matter of some importance to me as I'm finishing up a set of ten pieces to submit for publication. If accepted I'm sure the publisher will have their own ideas about typesetting the music. If not then I'll self publish it and then Lilypond may become an important part of my workflow.

I looked at the documentation this morning on how to import XML files and found that I could also use an ETF file. Am I correct that either requires running a program in the command line? I've done a little of that (IP config, etc) and I know how to get there (click on start, click on run and your command line appears) but it's definitely outside my comfort zone. It would be helpful if you discussed that aspect in more detail. Thanks.

It seems that the ETF convertor is not maintained anymore, so I wouldn't expect it to work very well. But yes, that requires running a command-line program, just as with the MusicXML convertor. It wasn't difficult to use, though. To run the MusicXML convertor, I just typed "musicxml2ly <filename>", where <filename> is the name of the MusicXML file, and it created a file with a .ly extension. I then ran LilyPond on that file, and it created the PDF.

If you're not comfortable with the command line, or not willing to learn, maybe LilyPond isn't for you. Although, it does seem there's a frontend for Windows: http://denemo.org/

If you would like to learn, I highly recommend you read the LilyPond tutorial: http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.12/Documentation/user/lilypond-learning/Tutorial#Tutorial

I myself am a computer programmer, so I find this to be a highly natural way of working. But I understand that this may not be typical. I'd be happy to help in any way.

Speaking as a Music Publisher I can say that LilyPond gives the most musical and professional looking prints possible with computer software.

The tweeks in Sibelius and Finale do not compare with even the most basic layout of a rough LilyPond score.

LilyPond may not WYSIWYG but the power and quality far out-weights this rather mute point for someone who really cares about the look and musical feel of scores.

We have started our own LilyPond Service Station at http://www.devilishpublishing.com/lilypond

This might help you get started not to mention the great LilyPond manuals which are light years ahead in simplicity and organisation than any £400 software!!

I think that Denemo is even more of a work in progress than MuseScore. It kept crashing when I tried it.

The best frontend is probably Rosegarden, which doesn't run on Windows, unfortunately.

Well I just tried using an xml file in Lilypond and ran into a basic problem. I've put the xml file in my my documents folder. My DOS skills are rusty to nonexistent. How do I specify the file, I tried just the name plus extension (Melody.xml) and it's unable to find the file. If someone would remind me what the proper syntax is for addressing files in the command line I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.