[chrismorgan]

It’s a similar deal with music engraving: the classics had variation, but most software is painfully mechanical. And that makes it subtly harder to read. One of Lilypond’s key goals was to imitate the variability of the old masters, the organic feel.

I’ve had similar thoughts on text layout as well. And I’d really love it if someone were to sponsor me to make such a thing, because as it is I doubt I’ll ever get to it… so many things to do, so little time.

As a practising Christian I find similar with printed Bibles comparing it with Bible software: the software we have is painfully inferior in many regards (no fixed pagination, for example, though fixed pagination is great for memory). And that’s an area that I do intend to do something about… one of these years.

There are many marvellous things about our technology now; but there were many marvellous things about what came before as well, and we''re often losing those features (as well as not taking advantage of the full possibilities of our new technology, settling for third best because it’s easy to implement).

[WalterBright]

The old illuminated texts were things of beauty, that's for sure. Though nobody could afford to buy a hand-lettered book, then or now.

[chrismorgan]

Eh, illuminated texts were beauty at the cost of function. They looked impressive, but they were not especially practical. Although beauty is nice, I tend to be more interested in things that were strictly functional where we’ve regressed. Musicians certainly report the scores of old masters with their variability easier to read than modern, rigidly consistent ones; easier to keep your place in, and all that. Subtle stuff. And that’s the sort of thing that Lilypond aims for (and certainly succeeds in at the very least partially, I’d say mostly).