<preface id="introduction">
<title>Introduction</title>

<para>
&lilypond; (<ulink url="http://lilypond.org/">lilypond.org</ulink>)
is an open-source music engraving program, producing very high-quality sheet music
printouts from fairly simple text input files. Those text files can be created with
any text editor, and &lilypond; then loads the text file and outputs a beautiful
engraving, by default in PDF format.
</para>

<para>
&frescobaldi; is an application designed to make editing &lilypond; music scores
faster and easier. You still will need to learn the &lilypond; input language.
If you read the "First Steps" section of this User Guide,
you'll also pickup some &lilypond; basics.
Then you can continue to learn using the Learning Manual from 
<ulink url="http://lilypond.org/doc/">LilyPond's excellent online documentation</ulink>.
</para>

<note><para>
Virtually all keyboard shortcuts that are mentioned in this User Guide are the
default ones; you can change them using <menuchoice><guimenu>Settings</guimenu>
<guimenuitem>Configure shortcuts...</guimenuitem></menuchoice>.
</para></note>

</preface>