Appreciation / Financial support

[James Harkins]

Hm, I sent this message yesterday, didn't go through. :-|

Following up on the appreciation another user expressed for Lilypond's power -- 
I really have to echo the sentiment. I'm sure I've mentioned before that my 
current project is a piece for sheng and computer. The sheng is a Chinese 
"mouth organ" (the Thai khaen is another type of mouth organ). Like the guitar, 
it's a polyphonic instrument and usually notated on one staff[1] -- with all 
the challenges of (classical) guitar notation.

I'm attaching a sample of today's typesetting work. As in earlier work on this 
piece, it's kind of shocking how little tweaking I have to do, even for 
moderately complex notation. (I cut one of the examples I tried to post before 
(maybe the list didn't like the size of the attachments) -- in that one, I 
dropped an ossia staff with a single line underneath the main staff, with 
feathered beaming to show an accel/ritard for a breath tremolo, piece of cake 
in LP while I'm fairly sure I would have had to slash my wrists to get the same 
result from Finale.)

Really, it blows me away. It's insane that notation software should be so 
smart. The LOMUS award is absolutely well-deserved. Many, many thanks and 
congratulations to the developers.

Related: I can't say I read the list very closely, so somehow I overlooked the 
fact before that David K.'s livelihood comes from working on Lilypond. I had 
assumed Lilypond was almost completely a volunteer effort (like SuperCollider, 
for which I contribute some code, bug fixes and documentation when I can), so I 
hadn't taken seriously the idea of supporting Lilypond financially. The recent 
thread changes my mind about that. I can't do it immediately for reasons I 
don't need to discuss, but after I get back to the US for summer holiday, I can 
make a donation on the order of a few years' worth of "Finale tax" (yearly 
$100-$120 US upgrade fee).

I'd urge other users to think in similar terms. If Lilypond is as valuable to 
you as Finale or Sibelius, or more: How much do those packages cost? Does a 
$10-$15 donation match the value you get out of Lilypond? My contribution may 
be a small amount of what David needs, but... if I can put that kind of value 
on Lilypond, maybe you can too.

hjh

[1] http://christopheradler.com/khaen-for-composers.pdf


--
James Harkins /// dewdrop world
address@hidden
http://www.dewdrop-world.net

"Come said the Muse,
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