This is the toplevel README to LilyPond

LilyPond is a music typesetter.  It produces beautiful sheet
music using a high level description file as  input.   Lily-
Pond is part of the GNU Project.

1: VERSIONING

LilyPond  uses a versioning scheme similar to the Linux ker-
nel.  In a  version  "x.y.z",  an  even  second  number  'y'
denotes  a  stable version.  For development versions 'y' is
odd.  For using straightforward score production, please use
the  latest  stable  version.   Development versions may not
produce good or nice scores.

2: REQUIREMENTS

For the compilation and running of LilyPond  you  need  some
additional  packages.   Please  refer  to  the  installation
instructions.

NOTE: If you downloaded a binary  (.rpm  or  a  W95/NT  .zip
file), then you don't have to compile LilyPond.

3: INSTALLATION

For  your  convenience,  a  formatted  copy  of  the INSTALL
instructions are in the toplevel directory, as INSTALL.txt

The process is fairly straightforward, but chances are  that
you  have  to specify directories for  to configure: this is
done with the options --enable-tex-dir and --enable-mf-dir

4: DOCUMENTATION

The real documentation is the directory Documentation/

To generate the pretty-printed docs, you have to run config-
ure first, and then do this:

make doc

You  can  also  simply read the .yo sources.  They are ASCII
text.  The complete documentation is accessible in formatted
form  at the website http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/hanwen/lily-
pond/index.html

5: COMMENTS

LilyPond is a long way from finished and  polished.   We  do
appreciate criticism, comments, bugreports, patches, etc.

             Please send your e-mail to one of the MAILING LISTS

and  not  to  us personally.  See Documentation/links.yo for
more info.

6: WINDOWS 32

If you have received this file as  part  of  a  DOS/Window32
distribution  (LilyPond-*.zip), then it is advisable to also
download the source package, since  it  might  contain  more
documentation ftp://ftp.cs.uu.nl/pub/GNU/LilyPond/

If you decide to build LilyPond from source, please read the
INSTALL.txt document first,  especially  the  Windows  NT/95
section.

7: CAVEATS

* Please read the file BUGS for some ugly bugs.

*  If  you  have  installed  a  previous version, be sure to
remove old font files, eg

     rm `find /var/lib/texmf/fonts -name 'feta*'`

a script to  do  this  for  you  is  in  buildscripts/clean-
fonts.sh

8: CDROM DISTRIBUTIONS

If  you  have received LilyPond on a cdrom, chances are that
development has moved a some patchlevels up.   Please  check
the latest version of LilyPond before reporting bugs.