Software Features
LilyPond's primary goal is to produce output comparable to professionally engraved scores instead of output that looks mechanical and computer-generated. An essay from the LilyPond website, written by LilyPond developers, explains some typographical issues addressed by LilyPond:
- Optical font scaling: depending on the staff size, the design of the music font is slightly altered; this is a feature that Donald Knuth's Computer Modern font is known for. As a result, note heads become more rounded, and staff lines become thicker.
- Optical spacing: stem directions are taken into account when spacing subsequent notes.
- Special ledger line handling: ledger lines are shortened when accidentals are nearby, thus enhancing readability.
- Proportional spacing: notes can be positioned in such a way that exactly reflects their duration. For example, with this setting, the space between consecutive quarter notes is four times greater than between consecutive sixteenth notes.
Read more about this topic: GNU LilyPond
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“The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii, like the metamorphosis of a nymph into a tree, has arrested us in an accustomed movement.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)