lilypond 2.6.5;  win98SE;  ie6.0.2800.1106SP1; gs6.0

This relates my first contact with lilypond, my confusion as a windows user. 
This feedback is my way of saying thank you.

The starting point is me, soon to be joining a small jazz combo on piano, 
never having done anything similar, preparing for the first practice session. 
We will be working through 4 standards 
so I want a realbook-like lead sheet for each, clear and uncluttered.
The singer requires all of these transposed, so I want my sheets transposed too. 
I started out with a manuscript pad, working in pencil. 
To avoid confusion with later pencil jottings I would have to photocopy these. 
And to make room for such jottings: leave off the empty staves; 
maybe even space out the other staves. 
(Or use Fidolino staves, but with me these are too uneven.)

I remembered trying a freeware program a few years ago and getting horribly 
bogged down in getting things reasonably spaced out. But I thought it might 
be worth trying layout on the PC again and found lilypond. 
I took a quick look through the docs and liked 
1) the char input 2) the nonproprietary output 3) the layout promises  4) voicings.


By the way, I am definitely not an early adopter.
I prefer to let the more enthusiastic ones cope with any teething troubles. 
And having found something that more or less suffices, I stick with it.
This explains the win98 above (but SE for USB), 
and anything else that may seem archaic.

I downloaded the latest stable version. 
It let me install it in my apps partition (thankyou). 
And then somehow, 
I was being invited to drag and drop for a demo. 
Ok; but how are you supposed to find welcome.pdf???
It may look as though I am a desktop messy but I'm not really.
It's just that there a *lot* of icons on it.  
This is annoying, but fortunately I know (how) to point windows explorer 
to the desktop and get a list view.

So this is how it is to be used?
I will improve on this by opening a folder (e.g. 'lilypond') on the desktop 
and working inside that. 
But the lilypond shortcut presumably needs adapting: 
change its [Start in] from 'C:\WINDOWS\Desktop' to 'C:\WINDOWS\Desktop\lilypond'. 
Test the same drag and drop inside folder 'lilypond'. 
No output files in this folder.....
No output files on the desktop either..........
Eventually found the output files lurking in c:\

This is some sort of default behaviour: 
 - not the [Start in] folder
 - not the .exe folder
 - but the DOS current directory for partition C: ?
No good for me. I want to be in control.

The tutorial doesn't say how to specify the output file. 
I am extremely doc-disoriented until I realise that the 
tutorial (which I was led to, and have concentrated on) 
is *inside* the user manual.
1.6. says of the Tutorial 'First time users should start here'.
In that case, the Tutorial should also point to the user manual. 
N.B. 'http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.6/Documentation/' says 'start here'.

Ah yes, the output file. 
I find '5 Running Lilypond' with a list of options. 
But this is written in Unixmanualspeak with usage context assumed.
And what is /FILE/?   with/without path?  with/without blanks? 
No, this is too steep for me. 
So then what is 'the default output file' when no /FILE/ is given? 
Erh, .. just above this it is talking about an 'init file' 
Is this the unix equivalent of what windows programs nowadays put in the registry? 
But it is normally of type .ly so this must be the wrong level. 
So maybe somewhere there is an environment. 
In the registry I find a 'Session Manager' 
but right next to it is a 'SessionManager' 
so I capitulate. 
(And should I have been able to find out what '-dgui' in the shortcut is doing?)

I write a 2-line batch file to 
 - delete .ps 
 - mimic the shortcuts invocation 
 all for the file 1.ly 
 which I base on '3.1.3 Notes and chords'. (thankyou)
I am in business 
(with a fixed filename, but I can use one folder per title). 

Some time later a careless click landed on 1.ly 
(the files jump around in the filelist all the time) 
and then I realised that a doubleclick was possible, was foreseen and worked. 
Much later I discover this in '2.2 Running LilyPond for the first time'. 
You mean the *second* time, don't you?