Re: Creating a font usable in Finale and Sibelius Programs

[Valentin Villenave]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 8:37 PM, Josh Nichols <address@hidden> wrote:
> I really enjoy the look and feel of the LilyPond Feta font, but I would like
> to use it in programs that can use other fonts like Sibelius.

This question has been asked a number of times (including by yourself ;-)
see for instance
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2008-10/msg00762.html

> I would really like to make this available and continue the excellence that
> LilyPond and Feta font have created, minus the complex language and
> programming necessary to make it happen.

IMNSHO, this is Not A Good Idea (tm).
The Feta font is only a tiny tiny part of what makes LilyPond
"excellent". And the Lily language really is not so complex.

When I started using LilyPond, I was writing an opera and I already
had engraved about 200 pages in Sibelius. Then I met LilyPond.

- For a while I tried to continue using Sibelius and importing the
Feta font (just like you). That didn't work.

- After that I realized the LilyPond quality was just too damn good,
so I tried to find a way to convert my .sib files into LilyPond code
(there was a sib2ly project back then, but it never got anywhere).

- After that I understood there would never be a way to do that
properly, so I tried to use an intermediate format such as musicXML or
MIDI, and then convert that to LilyPond.

- And after spending a few weeks and getting nowhere, I realized I had
to start over and copy my music from scratch. But the LilyPond
language was still too frightening to me, so I tried to enter my .ly
files using a MIDI keyboard.

- That wasn't really working for me, it was unbearably slow. So I just
ended up retyping the whole thing in plain code using my laptop
keyboard, a text editor and the LilyPondTool plugin.

And suddenly it appeared that this solution was indeed much, *much*
faster than I would ever have imagined. Copying my 200 pages in plain
LilyPond code took me less than three weeks (as a beginner). I
realized I had never ever been that fast with Sibelius/Finale/Encore,
so I had no more interest in using any of these programs.

Regards,
Valentin