Introducing OrchestralLily: A package to easily create complex orchestral scores in lilypond

[Reinhold Kainhofer]

I'm happy to finally present my latest project:

     OrchestralLily 
     
     A package for lilypond to easily create orchestral scores
     Version 0.01
     http://wiki.kainhofer.com/lilypond/orchestallily


If you are using Lilypond to write large orchestral scores, with individual 
scores for each instrument or instrument group, you have certainly run into 
the problem that the (usually quite complex) structure of each movement with 
lots of staff groups is the same, and you copy'n'paste Score and Staff 
definitions of exactly the same structure all over the place. Additionally, 
you have to manually track which instruments play in a movement and which do 
not.

This is exactly the point, which OrchestralLily tries to solve:
You define a staff hierarchy (or multiple staff group hierarchies) once, and 
OrchestralLily will take care of correctly creating the staves or staff 
groups. You can concentrate on writing the music instead of the the 
structure.

A very simple example can be found in the documentation:
http://wiki.kainhofer.com/lilypond/orchestallily#a_simple_examplesoprano_solo_and_violoncello


Currently, this is the very first preview release with probably several bugs 
(although I have to say that it works really well in my two large scores. For 
example, it saved me ~7000 lines of manual staff and score definitions in my 
score of Schubert's Stabat mater with 12 parts, 23 instruments and a total of 
35 different scores: full scores, vocal score, choral score, individual 
instrument scores, scores for groups of instruments...).

Proper support for cue notes (with clef and cue instrument name, but 
unfortunately without lyrics attached) is also included.

I hope you'll like it and find it useful!

Cheers,
Reinhold


PS: Two things that are not yet implemented but definitely planned are:
-) Staves with multiple voices (using \voiceOne, \voiceTwo), possibly with 
lyrics attached. Currently, you'll still have to define those staves 
manually.
-) Support for transposing instruments. You'd define the music in sounding 
pitch, but the displayed staff would be automatically transposed to the 
defined key. Thus, all cue notes will also be correct automatically.

-- 
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Reinhold Kainhofer, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
email: address@hidden, http://reinhold.kainhofer.com/
 * Financial and Actuarial Mathematics, TU Wien, http://www.fam.tuwien.ac.at/
 * K Desktop Environment, http://www.kde.org, KOrganizer maintainer
 * Chorvereinigung "Jung-Wien", http://www.jung-wien.at/