If you want to try processing any of the tutorial examples, it's recommended that you install LilyPond and put the following lines in a file named .fomus in your home directory. Also make sure that you have LilyPond installed, and a PDF viewer if you are using Windows (FOMUS tries to use Adobe Acrobat by default on Windows). You must create the .fomus file yourself using a text editor.
If your machine is running Linux or you find that FOMUS isn't automatically invoking LilyPond to compile output files, uncomment the line that reads ‘//lily-exe-path =’ by removing the ‘//’ at the beginning and change ‘/usr/bin/lilypond’ to the correct path of the lilypond executable. On OS X this is probably buried deep inside the Applications directory somewhere and in Windows its probably somewhere inside Program Files. On Linux the command which lilypond should show you the correct path. If FOMUS is compiling LilyPond files but isn't automatically displaying them (or you are running Linux), then uncomment the line that reads ‘//lily-view-exe-path =’ (remove the ‘//’) and change ‘open’ to the path of a PDF viewer (the viewer app must be able to take the name of a .pdf file as its first argument).
Also, if you are running Windows, change ‘/tmp/’ in the bottom line to a directory that can be used as a temporary directory (for example, the line might read ‘filename = "C:\\Documents and Settings\\your_user_name\\Local Settings\\Temp\\out.ly"’).
/-
Set the path to the LilyPond executable, so FOMUS automatically
processes LilyPond output files. On Linux, the path is probably
"/usr/bin/lilypond" or "/usr/local/bin/lilypond". On OS X the path is
probably "/Applications/LilyPond.app/Contents/Resources/bin/lilypond".
In Windows it's probably
"C:\\Program Files\\LilyPond\\usr\\bin\\lilypond.exe". These defaults
should already be set on OS X and Windows, so FOMUS should work out of
the box and you can most likely omit this line.
-/
//lily-exe-path = "/usr/bin/lilypond"
/-
Set the path to a .pdf viewer application, so FOMUS automatically
displays the results. On Linux insert the path to your favorite PDF
viewer. On OS X, the command "open" works. On Windows, "C:\\Program
Files\\Adobe\\Reader 9.0\\Reader\\AcroRd32.exe" works if Acrobat
Reader is installed in the default location. These defaults should
already be set on OS X and Windows, so FOMUS should work out of the
box and you can most likely omit this line.
-/
//lily-view-exe-path = "open"
/-
If you don't specify an output filename anywhere, this is the default.
Windows users should choose a different directory here for temporary
files.
-/
filename = "/tmp/out.ly"
You should now only need to type fomus filename at the command prompt to run each example.
If the lily-exe-path and lily-view-exe-path paths are correct, a score should automatically appear at the end of each run.