Re: Completing the Lilypond puzzle

[Erik Sandberg]

On Sunday 09 October 2005 14.46, lars prins wrote:
> Lilypond can do everything and lilypond is for everybody.
> Yet, I don't seem to be part of this equation somehow.
>
> I am getting very frustrated to get Lilypond to do the
> simplest thing, to create a PDF file with 4 pages of empty
> piano sheet music that I can use to jot notes on. That
> shouldn't be too difficult right? But how do all these little
> fragments of the Lilypond manual fit together?
>
> I need the \PianoStaff to get the braces I guess.
> I need \skip to get empty sheet music.
> I need some paper control for margins etc.
> I want to suppress indenting of the first system.
> I don't want page numbers
> I don't want bar numbers
> I don't want the big 'C' to appear
> All I want is 4 pages of empty piano systems with a
> trebble and bass clef.
>
> After having spent about 8 hours in total during the last
> week, I am running out of permutations to try. This is
> after about 3 previous attempts the last years to get
> into Lilypond. This time, it started to look very promising.
>
> However, especially the various possible combinations of
> new, context, staff, pianostaff and score (some working,
> some don't), puzzle me. I guess it is all there in the manual,
> but I can't put it together.

Lilypond isn't mainly a 'musical symbol drawing program'. It's a program that 
knows about nice conventions for music formatting. If you want something 
outside this, then it's likely that lilypond isn't what you want.

I think the easiest way for you, should be to create 3 pages of skips, output 
it to a .svg output file, open it in Inkscape, throw away the first and last 
page, erase everything you don't want, and print out that in four copies. 
It's possible to do in other ways, but I think using Inkscape is the easiest 
solution in your case.

> If the learning curve is really this steep, I'm affraid that Lilypond
> will stay reserved for that rare combination of Unix programmer
> and Music enthousiast. Personally I'm more interested in working
> with music than with notation tools per se. I really appreciate
> the effort that has gone in Lilypond, and a non-profit effort
> at that, 
(btw: the nice thing is about freedom/openness, not about non-profit. One of 
us makes enough profit on LilyPond, to make a living on it)

-- 
Erik