16 Mar
2004
16 Mar
'04
10:03 a.m.
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 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