Re: Adapting Lilypond Rendering Engine for iPad

[kieran coulter]

Hi everyone,

I had a project involving Lilypond on the backburner for some time, the form factor just seemed to be off trying to use a laptop or desktop.

Now since the iPad came out I've been paying attention to Apple's restrictions on embedded code in submitted apps, and whether they can get approved. 
It seems like they've relaxed those restrictions since 2010, but I could be wrong.

So I'd like to have a go at seeing what would be involved in getting Lilypond running in an iOS environment. I have a choice between using it, or NoteAbilityPro (that is being ported to iOS at this moment), but I like the output from Lilypond quite a bit more, so I want to try with it first.

What might be the main obstacles I would run into, and are any insurmountable? I would like to extend a project I would be adapting from a Max/MSP prototype, either in XCode (if I try to target iOS exclusively) or Visual Studio (via Marmalade, if I end up targeting multiple tablet platforms including iOS), either way, using Juce as my main library, a PDF reader, and hopefully Lilypond, 

Thanks for any and all advice/info!

Kieran

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From:	Graham Percival
Subject:	Re: Adapting Lliypond Rendering Engine for iPad
Date:	Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:39:34 +0100

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On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 9:28 PM, Feifan Zhou <address@hidden> wrote:
> I am currently looking  to work on a music notation program for iPad,
> and I believe that Lilypond would
> provide an excellent rendering engine for my needs.

I hope that you are aware that LilyPond is copyright and released
under the GPLv3.  Are you willing to abide by the terms of the GPLv3?
And more to the point, will Apple let you do so?
http://lwn.net/Articles/396535/

> As such, I have decided to leave most of the rendering engine as-is,
> and feed input as a Lilypond file, and
> simply use the resulting PDF.

Ok, but apparently apple won't let you distribute such an app on the ipod.

> Could someone guide me through the code,
> and where I can begin to hook up Lilypond to my project?

Make a file.  Call lilypond on the file.  It has nothing to do with code.

- Graham