1.6 About this manual
The manual is divided into four books.
Learning manual
This book explains how to begin learning LilyPond, as well as explaining
some key concepts in easy terms.
- The
Tutorial,
gives a gentle introduction to typesetting music. First time
users should start here.
- Putting it all together,
explains some general concepts about the lilypond file format. If
you are not certain where to place a command, read this chapter!
- Working on LilyPond projects,
discusses practical uses of LilyPond and how to avoid some common
problems.
- Tweaking output,
shows how to change the default engraving that LilyPond
produces.
Notation reference
This book explains all the LilyPond commands which produce notation. It
assumes that readers are familiar with the concepts in the Learning
manual.
- Basic notation,
discusses topics grouped by notation construct. This section gives
details about basic notation that will be useful in almost any
notation project.
- Instrument-specific notation,
discusses topics grouped by notation construct. This section gives
details about special notation that will only be useful for particular
instrument (or vocal) groups.
- Advanced notation,
discusses topics grouped by notation construct. This section gives
details about complicated or unusual notation.
- Changing defaults,
explains how to fine tune layout.
- Non-musical notation,
discusses non-musical output such as titles, multiple movements,
and how to select which MIDI instruments to use.
- Spacing issues,
discusses issues which affect the global output, such as selecting
paper size or specifying page breaks.
- Interfaces for programmers,
explains how to create music functions.
Program usage
This book explains how to execute the program and how to integrate
LilyPond notation with other programs.
- Running LilyPond,
shows how to run LilyPond and its helper programs. In addition, this
section explains how to upgrade input files from previous versions of
LilyPond.
- LilyPond-book,
explains the details behind creating
documents with in-line music examples, like this manual.
- Converting from other formats,
explains how to run the conversion programs. These programs are
supplied with the LilyPond package, and convert a variety of music
formats to the
.ly
format.
Appendices
This book contains useful reference charts.
- The
Literature list,
contains a set of useful reference books for those who wish to know
more on notation and engraving.
- The
Scheme tutorial,
presents a short introduction to Scheme, the programming
language that music functions use.
- Notation manual tables,
are a set of tables showing the chord names, MIDI instruments,
a list of color names, and the Feta font.
- Templates,
of LilyPond pieces. Just cut and paste a
template into a file, add notes, and you're done!
- The
Cheat sheet,
is a handy reference of the most common LilyPond commands.
- The
LilyPond command index,
is an index of all LilyPond
\commands
.
- The
LilyPond index,
is a complete index.
Other information
There are a number of other places which may be very valuable.
- The Music glossary, explains musical terms and
includes translations to various languages. It is also available in
PDF.
If you are not familiar with music notation or music terminology
(especially if you are a non-native English speaker), it is highly
advisable to consult the glossary.
- The
Snippets
are a great collection of short examples which demonstrate tricks, tips,
and special features of LilyPond. Most of these snippets can also be
found in the LilyPond Snippet Repository. This website also has a searchable LilyPond manual.
- The
Program reference
is a set of heavily cross linked HTML pages, which document the
nitty-gritty details of each and every LilyPond class, object, and
function. It is produced directly from the formatting definitions used.
Almost all formatting functionality that is used internally, is
available directly to the user. For example, all variables that control
thickness values, distances, etc., can be changed in input files. There
are a huge number of formatting options, and all of them are described
in this document. Each section of the notation manual has a See
also subsection, which refers to the generated documentation. In the
HTML document, these subsections have clickable links.
Once you are an experienced user, you can use the manual as reference:
there is an extensive index1, but the document is also
available in
one big page,
which can be searched easily using the search facility of a web
browser.
In all HTML documents that have music fragments embedded, the LilyPond
input that was used to produce that image can be viewed by clicking
the image.
The location of the documentation files that are mentioned here can vary
from system to system. On occasion, this manual refers to
initialization and example files. Throughout this manual, we refer to
input files relative to the top-directory of the source archive. For
example, input/lsr/dirname/bla.ly may refer to the file
lilypond2.x.y/input/lsr/dirname/bla.ly. On binary
packages for the Unix platform, the documentation and examples can
typically be found somewhere below
/usr/share/doc/lilypond/. Initialization files, for
example scm/lily.scm, or ly/engraver-init.ly,
are usually found in the directory /usr/share/lilypond/.
Finally, this and all other manuals, are available online both as PDF
files and HTML from the web site, which can be found at
http://www.lilypond.org/.