
          This is the toplevel README to LilyPond

LilyPond  is the GNU Project music typesetter. It transforms
a musical description file into beautiful sheet music.

1: VERSIONING

LilyPond uses a versioning scheme similar to the Linux  ker-
nel.   In  a  version  "x.y.z",  an  even  second number 'y'
denotes a stable version.  For development versions  'y'  is
odd.  For using straightforward score production, please use
the latest stable version.   Development  versions  may  not
produce good or nice scores.

2: REQUIREMENTS

For  the  compilation  and running of LilyPond you need some
additional  packages.   Please  refer  to  the  installation
instructions.

NOTE:  If  you  downloaded  a  binary (.rpm or a W95/NT .zip
file), then you don't have to compile LilyPond.

3: INSTALLATION

For your  convenience,  a  formatted  copy  of  the  INSTALL
instructions are in the toplevel directory, as INSTALL.txt

The  process is fairly straightforward, but chances are that
you have to specify directories for  to configure:  this  is
done with the options --enable-tex-dir and --enable-mf-dir

4: DOCUMENTATION

The real documentation is the directory Documentation/

To generate the pretty-printed docs, you have to run config-
ure first, and then do this:

make doc

You can also simply read the .yo sources.   They  are  ASCII
text.  The complete documentation is accessible in formatted
form at the website  http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/hanwen/lily-
pond/index.html

5: COMMENTS

LilyPond  is  a  long way from finished and polished.  We do
appreciate criticism, comments, bugreports, patches, etc.

             Please send your e-mail to one of the MAILING LISTS

and not to us personally.   See  Documentation/links.yo  for
more info.

6: WINDOWS 32

If  you  have  received  this file as part of a DOS/Window32
distribution (LilyPond-*.zip), then it is advisable to  also
download  the  source  package,  since it might contain more
documentation ftp://ftp.cs.uu.nl/pub/GNU/LilyPond/

If you decide to build LilyPond from source, please read the
INSTALL.txt  document  first,  especially  the Windows NT/95
section.

7: CAVEATS

* Please read the file BUGS for some ugly bugs.

* If you have installed  a  previous  version,  be  sure  to
remove old font files, eg

     rm `find /var/lib/texmf/fonts -name 'feta*'`

a  script  to  do  this  for  you  is in buildscripts/clean-
fonts.sh

8: CDROM DISTRIBUTIONS

If you have received LilyPond on a cdrom, chances  are  that
development  has  moved a some patchlevels up.  Please check
the latest version of LilyPond before reporting bugs.
