### 1.6 About this manual

The manual is divided into the following chapters:

- The Tutorial gives a gentle introduction to typesetting music. First time users should start here.
- The Notation manual discusses topics grouped by notation construct. Once you master the basics, this is the place to look up details.
- The Changing defaults explains how to fine tune layout.
- The chapter Invoking LilyPond shows how to run LilyPond and its helper programs.
- The lilypond-book manual explains the details behind creating documents with in-line music examples (like this manual).
- The chapter Converting from other formats explains how to run the conversion programs. These programs are supplied with the LilyPond package, and convert a variety of music formats to the `.ly` format. In addition, this section explains how to upgrade input files from previous versions of LilyPond.
- The Literature list contains a set of useful reference books, for those who wish to know more on notation and engraving.

Once you are an experienced user, you can use the manual as reference: there is an extensive index1, but the document is also available in a big HTML page which can be searched easily using the search facility of a web browser. If you are not familiar with music notation or music terminology (especially if you are a non-native English speaker), it is advisable to consult the glossary as well. The glossary explains musical terms, and includes translations to various languages. It is a separate document.

This manual is not complete without a number of other documents. They are not available in print, but should be included with the documentation package for your platform:

- Program reference (available here)

  The program reference is a set of heavily cross linked HTML pages, which documents the nit-gritty details of each and every LilyPond class, object and function. It is produced directly from the formatting definitions used.

  Almost all formatting functionality that is used internally, is available directly to the user. For example, all variables that control thicknesses, distances, etc, can be changed in input files. There are a huge number of formatting options, and all of them are described in the generated documentation. Each section of the notation manual has a See also subsection, which refers to the the generated documentation. In the HTML document, these subsections have clickable links.

- Templates (available here)

  After you have gone through the tutorial, you should be able to write input files. In practice, writing files from scratch turns out to be intimidating. To give you a head start, we have collected a number of often-used formats in example files. These files can be used as a start; simply copy the template and add notes in the appropriate places.

- Various input examples (available here) This collection of files shows various tips and tricks, and is available as a big HTML document, with pictures and explanatory texts included.
- The regression tests (available here)

  This collection of files tests each notation and engraving feature of LilyPond in one file. The collection is primarily there to help us debug problems, but it can be instructive to see how we exercise the program. The format is similar to the the tips and tricks document.

In all HTML documents that have music fragments embedded, the LilyPond input that was used to produce that image can be viewed by clicking the image.

The location of the documentation files that are mentioned here can vary from system to system. On occasion, this manual refers to initialization and example files. Throughout this manual, we refer to input files relative to the top-directory of the source archive. For example, input/test/bla.ly may refer to the file lilypond-1.7.19/input/test/bla.ly. On binary packages for the Unix platform, the documentation and examples can typically be found somewhere below /usr/share/doc/lilypond/. Initialization files, for example scm/lily.scm, or ly/engraver-init.ly, are usually found in the directory /usr/share/lilypond/.

Finally, this and all other manuals, are available online both as PDF files and HTML from the web site, which can be found at http://www.lilypond.org/.

#### Footnotes

[1] If you are looking for something, and you cannot find it in the manual, that is considered a bug. In that case, please file a bug report.

Read comments on this page, or add one. This page is for LilyPond-2.2.2 (stable-branch).