[linux-audio-dev] LilyPond interview on linuxmusician.com

[Paul Davis]

>> it appears that many people don't know about amadeus.
>
>There is a good reason for that: it's totally unavailable to 
>practically everyone.  It's an extremely expensive closed-source 
>product that as far as I know is no longer even sold.

i think i worded my comments very poorly yesterday. 

>I think the problem here is just that you seem to have started from 
>the assumption that Lilypond was in fact unique, and been 
>disappointed when it turned out not to be so.  It is unique in the 
>sense that it's the only tool dedicated to making true 
>publication-quality engraving available to anyone, but of course it's 
>not a new idea as software.  Neither is Ardour, yet you still manage 
>to describe that as a revolution on its webpage.

indeed, a very fine and appropriately back-atcha comparison. lilypond
is certainly just as revolutionary as any of the other tools under
development by anyone else here on this list, and for all the same
reasons. 

i think i gave the impression that lilypond bores me or something,
when the truth is quite the contrary. i think its an incredible
program, and it produces wonderful, wonderful output. when i read an
interview about it last year, i was raving to several friends of mine
about its potential (we have neighbours who work in the music
publishing industry).

you are right - i was a little disappointed to find that there was
another program that has been around for many years that embodies the
same kind of design philosophy as lilypond - its hard to think of
other examples like this, where the proprietary-but-ancient tool is
the better tool. for text typesetting, TeX was the gold standard that
proprietary software has still barely matched. here it seems we have a
case where, just as with ardour and other DAW/sequencer tools, the
gold standard is a proprietary program (or some combination of them),
and open source is on the threshold of offering the same kind of
quality and functionality to everyone.

so to reiterate, i love lilypond, i think its great and amadeus is not
really a viable alternative to it for all the reasons that have been
mentioned (cost, lack of availability, etc. etc.)

--p