Manuals

Introduction

• Text input: LilyPond is a text-based music engraver. Read this first!
• Learning Manual: a “must-read” gentle introduction to LilyPond. (details of Learning)
• Glossary: (optional reading) musical terms and translations. (details of Glossary)
• Essay: (optional reading) background information about computer engraving. (details of Essay)

Regular use

• Notation: syntax reference. (details of Notation)
• Usage: running the programs. (details of Usage)
• Snippets: short tricks and tips. (details of Snippets)

Infrequent Use

• FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions.
• Web: this document. (details of Web)
• Changes: what’s new? (details of Changes)
• Extending: fancy tweaks. (details of Extending)
• Internals: tweaks reference. (details of Internals)

Other material

• All: previous stable versions and current as a compressed archive.
• LilyPond Snippet Repository: user-created examples, hints and tips.
• Video Tutorials: Ben Lemon, a LilyPond user, has created a range of video tutorials on his blog and which are aimed at new users.
• LilyPond’s Scheme: an external tutorial to learn Scheme, the language used to program LilyPond. Recommended if you are an absolute beginner when it comes to programming.
• Learning Scheme for LilyPond: another LilyPond-oriented Scheme tutorial. Recommended if you have some experience with programming in another language.
• Extending Guide: an external documentation resource about extending LilyPond in Scheme.
• Development: manuals for the unstable version.
• FDL: these manuals are published under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Manual formats

The LilyPond manuals generally come in three formats: split HTML, big HTML and PDF. Split HTML is good for reading online. Big HTML (and some of these can be very big) contains the whole manual in a single page. PDF is available for downloading and using offline. To get to these 3 formats, follow the links that read details of and then the manual name.