Re: producing "archival" scores

[Valentin Villenave]

Hello everybody, hello Jason,

I would like to add my 2 cents here: though LilyPond syntax evolves
indeed very quickly, you'll always be able to find the version of
LilyPond which was in use when you first typed your score, on
http://lilypond.org/web/install/older-versions or
http://download.linuxaudio.org/lilypond/sources/

This is why open-Source gives some "guarantees" (well, relatively at
least) you won't be able to find with any other proprietary software:
even if, say, Han-Wen, Jan and a few other couldn't take it anymore
someday, or if the LilyPond.org site was taken down and not
recoverable, or the worst situation you could imagine, you'll probably
be able to find some repository somewhere with the version you need,
since anybody is (and will always be) granted to redistribute it.

Just try to find "Encore" v2.0 by Passport Design, for example: I
would be surprised if you managed to find it (by legal ways, that is
;-)

--and I'm not sure Myriad will live longer than Passport, by the
way... though I hope it will, of course.

Even Adobe modifies its PDF standard, so there are probably more risks
to use PDF for archival purposes than LilyPond (try to find Acrobat
Reader 2.0 nowadays, and then try to imagine how easy it will be to
find Adobe Reader 8.0 in 10 years...) The truth is: Companies _die_;
Libre Software doesn't. And when a company dies, its entire
Intellectual Property dies with it, or is sold to some other
Corporation which is probably going to let it die anyway (look at
BeOS).

Now, the "learning curve" question. Well, though LilyPond may not seem
that user-friendly to someone who's already used to Finale or
Sibelius, I can tell you, as a teacher, that for somebody who hasn't
used any notation software before, LilyPond is always a tremendous
discovery. It is not _that_ hard to use, and I can't agree with you
when you say that "it is aimed at a particular group of users" (even
my grandmother, which had never used a computer before last year, now
uses LilyPond under Linux!)
I would say, on the contrary, that "there is a particular group of
users that LilyPond is NOT aimed at"; that is the Finale and Sibelius
addicts --and I used to be one of those myself. But do not take their
reluctance for a feeling everyone tends to share.

One last thing: you were talking about archival scores. The fact is,
an archival score _does_ need to be read, but does not necessary need
to be modified by anyone. To read a LilyPond file : that is, for the
standard Windows user, to double-click on the right .ly file, and to
open the given PDF. Where is the learning curve? On the other hand, if
some corrections are needed, the right person, e.g. you or anybody
qualified enough, will be able to handle it effortless.

This is why, to give you a short answer: yes, LilyPond files can, and
should be considered "archival". And by the way, this is why the
rather ambitious Mutopia Project (http://www.mutopiaproject.org/ )
doesn't accept anything else than LilyPond scores.
This is why so many talented --and patient-- persons such as
http://nicolas.sceaux.free.fr/index.php/ ,
http://vigna.dsi.unimi.it/music.php ,
http://sankey.ws/scarlatti/index.html ,
http://jeffcovey.net/music/scores/ or
http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/bycomposer.html (by L.Conrad)
have chosen to use our favorite software for their "archival" resources.

I hope this might convince you to share my --and their-- faith in LilyPond :)

Regards,
Valentin Villenave.