Hi Stanron.

My only sort of experience if you can call it that comes from times at folkinfo. I did go through times of wondering what other systems may offer as well as, eg. wondering whether our choice of abcm2ps for abc conversions was right, etc.

As such (and as a non sight reader) my only encounters have been to try to get a brief understanding as to where and for who it might be useful...

That lilypond file was a straight conversion from abc using the command line abc2ly program. From there, this time, I used frescobaldi which along with lilypond should be available on your (I can't remember which one but I'm pretty sure you are a linux user) distribution. That will allow you to preview and edit (although mine was straight copy/paste) as well as produce a pdf output without using the command line.

Hope that helps a touch.