Lilypond

Among the numerous improvements and changes, the following might be most visible:

_ Many items are now positioned using their actual outline rather than a rectangular bounding box. This greatly reduces the occurrence of unsightly large gaps.

_ Sets and overrides can now use the syntax

\override Voice.TextSpanner.bound-details.left.text = "rit."

instead of the previous

\override Voice.TextSpanner #'(bound-details left text) = "rit."

_ Triplets with a given group length can now be written as

\tuplet 3/2 4 { c8 c c c c c }

instead of

\times 2/3 { c8 c c } \times 2/3 { c8 c c }

This release contains the usual number of bugfixes.

We are happy to announce the release of LilyPond 2.15.40. This release contains the usual number of bugfixes.

It is strongly recommended that normal users do not use this release, and instead use the stable 2.14 version. Please note that due to a few Critical bugs, this is not the next release candidate.

There is a new define-scheme-function command in analogy to define-music-function which can be used to define functions evaluating to Scheme expressions while accepting arguments in Lilypond syntax.

The construct #{ … #} can now be used not just for constructing sequential music lists, but also for single music events, void music expressions, post events, markups (mostly freeing users from having to use the markup macro), markup lists, number expressions, context definitions and modifications, and a few other things. If it encloses nothing or only a single music event, it no longer returns a sequential music list but rather a void music expression or just the music event itself, respectively.

New command-line option '--loglevel=level' to control how much output LilyPond creates. Possible values are ERROR, WARN, BASIC_PROGRESS, PROGRESS, DEBUG.

\set \once now correctly resets the property value to the previous value.

The alignment of dynamic spanners (hairpins, text crescendo, etc.) is now automatically broken if a different direction is explicitly given.

Appoggiaturas and acciaccaturas now also work inside a slur, not only inside a phrasing slur. Also, a function \slashedGrace was added that does does not use a slur from the acciaccatura note.

Many improvements have been made in the past two and a half years since the previous main stable version. A few major improvements are:

* LilyPond is now licensed under the GNU GPL v3 or higher.
* The vertical spacing engine has been drastically changed, making it much more flexible and easier to control.
* Automatic beaming is now more flexible, and beam collisions are avoided.