README for Frescobaldi
======================

Homepage: http://www.frescobaldi.org/  
Main author: Wilbert Berendsen

Frescobaldi is a LilyPond sheet music text editor. It aims to be powerful, yet
lightweight and easy to use. Frescobaldi is Free Software, freely available
under the General Public License. 

Features:

- Powerful text editor with syntax highlighting and automatic completion
- Music view with advanced two-way Point & Click
- Midi player to proof-listen LilyPond-generated MIDI files
- Midi capturing to enter music
- Powerful Score Wizard to quickly setup a music score
- Snippet Manager to store and apply text snippets, templates or scripts
- Use multiple versions of LilyPond, automatically selects the correct version
- Built-in LilyPond documentation browser and built-in help
- Configurable document outline view to navigate large LilyPond scores easily
- Smart layout-control functions like coloring specific objects in the PDF
- Import ABC, Midi and MusicXML using the LilyPond-provided tools
- Experimental export to MusicXML
- Modern user interface with configurable colors, fonts and keyboard shortcuts
- Translated into: Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Swedish, Czech,
  Russian, Spanish, Galician, Turkish, Polish, Brazilian and Ukrainian.

Music functions:

- Transpose music
- Change music from relative to absolute and vice versa
- Change the language used for note names
- Change the rhythm (double, halve, add/remove dots, copy, paste) etc
- Hyphenate lyrics using word-processor hyphenation dictionaries
- Add spanners, dynamics, articulation easily using the Quick Insert panel
- Update LilyPond syntax using convert-ly, with display of differences

Frescobaldi is designed to run on all major operating systems (Linux, Mac OS X
and MS Windows). It is named after Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643), an Italian
composer of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and early Baroque period.

Here is an idea of the basic Frescobaldi workflow:

- Start Frescobaldi
- Open a .ly file or create one using *File->New* from template or
  *Tools->Setup new Score...* and fill in some music
- Press Ctrl+M to run LilyPond
- If the LilyPond output shows errors, press Ctrl+E to jump to the first error
- If you see other mistakes in the music, click the notes to move the text
  cursor there
- Fix the errors or mistakes in the text
- Press Ctrl+M again to update the music view
- When a piece is finished, press Ctrl+Shift+P once to run LilyPond with point
  and click turned off (this results in a much smaller PDF file).

Frescobaldi is written in Python and uses PyQt for its user interface.
See the INSTALL file for other requirements and installation instructions.


