NOTATIO

The last stable version of LilyPond is released: http://lilypond.org/download.html
Some syntax have been simplified and new ones have been added. A full list of noteworthy new features is given in: http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.20/Documenta ... index.html
Cheers!
Pierre

Taking a look at the regression tests gives a nice idea of LilyPond's capabilities:
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.19/input/reg ... files.html

My small criticism of Lilypond (apart from not wanting to learn and type code, of course ) is that output from Lilypond always looks like output from Lilypond. I dare say there are ways of personalising the output, but the stuff I've seen tends to have a certain homogeneity to it. That may be a lack of experience or effort on the part of the user.

Every app has its tell-tale faults and defaults, of course. But Lilypond tends to look more like Lilypond than Finale looks like Finale, if you see what I mean. I guess that may be inherent in the 'interpreted' nature.

Hm … has it to do with fonts? Sibelius’s and LilyPond’s default fonts have treble clefs (LilyPond also a whole note, a trill and a natural sign) that are very distinct from others.

Certainly the font is a part of it. (I guess an interesting experiment would be to do a page of default output from LP in Maestro, Opus, Bravura.... -- and vice versa: Finale with Gootville, etc.) But I think it's the note spacing and page layout too.

Whenever I see a page done in Lilypond, I always think "That was done in Lilypond", whereas with other apps, I just think "I wonder which app did that?".

I understand exactly what you mean, benwiggy. I relate it to documents created by LaTeX. They are very easy to identify based on fonts, formatting, styles, etc. Most users know how to use it and seldom about the intricate details that are required to give it a personal feel outside of fonts. LilyPond is very similar to me that way. It takes some know-how to customize the layout and it's much harder to customize the *notation* algorithm. So, it's no surprise that it's easy to spot a score created by LilyPond compared to GUI-based apps where you can click+drag things around to some degree. In Finale, Sibelius, etc., you *have* to intervene and break away the default layout. So, it's also no surprise that it's more difficult to identify which GUI-based app a score was created in because it could have changed dramatically depending on who edited it.

Now, that isn't to say that LaTeX documents are easy to identify because they are formatted poorly. Quite the contrary. Its layout algorithm is incredibly powerful and accurate (if used properly). LilyPond is the same. Yes, you can make it do things incorrectly, but if you follow the syntax guidelines and structure the input files appropriately, it's hard to argue with LilyPond's ability to get things right most of the time.

Yes, LaTeX too. You can't fault it, but it can seem a bit mechanical? I'm nit-picking, of course: I'd rather people produced anodyne but accurate stuff in Lilypond than badly done stuff in Finale.

I was asked to create a revised edition of some liturgical music for a well-known fenland University choir, and they wanted me to match the text of the original, which had been done by a student in LaTeX, so I had to use Knuth's CMU font in Dorico. <shudder>