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Using music notation in OpenOffice.org

OOoLilyPond is a macro for OpenOffice.org that simplifies the integration of music notation in OpenOffice.org Writer, Impress and Draw. It can be used to write a book on music theory or to write down exercises for music instruments or voices which need to be commented with lots of text.

The music expression is entered as text code in the LilyPond language and then rendered into an image. It needs some time to get familar with the LilyPond language but once learned, small pieces of music are entered much faster than with any other sofware.

The author likes to thank Geoffroy Piroux who has written the macro OOoLaTeX. OOoLilyPond has been derived from OOoLaTeX. Thanks also to Andy May for the installation instructions for Mac OS X and to Vern Takebayashi for testing. And of course many thanks to the authors of LilyPond.

Samuel Hartmann, July 2007

Table of Contents

News

Screenshot

Download

Installation

FAQ

News

2007-07-20: New Release 0.3.2

This is a bug fix release. There are no new features. Error handling has been improved.

2006-12-30: New Release 0.3.1

Contains templates for LilyPond version 2.10. The template names have changed. The default template is now "a4". All other templates are based on the "a4" template and differ only in one property. The templates vary properties like staff size, line width and time signature visibility. The user is encouraged to create his own templates which combine the desired properties.

2006-12-09: OOoLilyPond is running on Mac OS X

OOoLilyPond has been successfully tested on Mac OS X. The installation instructions on the web page are updated with the section for Mac OS X.

Screenshot

Download

You can download the latest version of OOoLilyPond from sourceforge.net:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=177831

SourceForge.net Logo

Installation

System Requirements

Linux/Unix:
OpenOffice.org 2.0 or higher.
LilyPond 2.6, 2.8, 2.10, not 2.11.

Windows:
Windows XP, may also work on Windows 2000.
OpenOffice.org 2.2, may also work with OpenOffice.org 2.1 but not with 2.0
LilyPond 2.6, 2.8, 2.10, not 2.11.

Mac OS X:
LilyPond 2.6, 2.8, 2.10, not 2.11.

Installing on Linux

Installing on Windows

Installing on Mac OS X

Testing the Macro

Place the cursor in a Writer document. Click Ctrl-M to open the OOoLilyPond Editor.

Click the “Config” button. In the configuration dialog check whether the template path corrensponds to your lilypond version. There are currently templates available for 2.6, 2.8 and 2.10. Close the configruation dialog.

Enter the LilyPond code. Here is an Example:

\key c \minor \relative c'' { c16 es, d es c es d es c' es, d es c es d es }

Click "LilyPond" to translate it to an image.

You can later on change the code by selecting the image and pressing Ctrl-M again.

Cleaning up and configuration

After having installed OOoLilyPond the way it is described above, you have the OooLilyPond folder either in your home folder (on Linux) or in the folder for program files (Windows). The only files still needed after the installation are the templates in OOoLilyPond/templates. If you like, you can move the templates to any other place. You just have to tell OOoLilyPond the new path in the configuration dialog.

You can choose png or eps as output format. When choosing png OOoLilyPond renders the music notation to a bitmap of the specified resolution. The file size of your document may become large (depending on the resolution) and navigation in the document may become slow. It is better to use the eps format when possible (on Windows during testing it did not work). When using the eps format the images are only displayed as a low resolution preview. When printed, the music notation is rendered in the full printer resolution.

FAQ

When Compiling the code I get the following error:
lilypond: /usr/lib/openoffice/program/libstdc++.so.6: version
'CXXABI_1.3.1' not found (required by lilypond)

In OOOLilyPond's configuration dialog, change LilyPond Executable from

lilypond

to

env LD_LIBRARY_PATH= lilypond

(Note the space between = and lilypond!)