Finally, after some months of testing, the patches of Marc Hohl have been included in the core of LilyPond. Now also the modern musician who needs tablature will be able to use LilyPond easily and enjoy the good-looking of TabStaff..
I guess this will open the doors of LilyPond to many new users. Let's see how the default look of tablatures has been improved..

The old behaviour for TabStaff - LilyPond =<2.13.3

LilyPond has been supporting tablature feature since version 1.6.0 (august 2002). But until version 2.13.3 the default output for tablatures includes a lot of unnecessary signs, such as rests, note duration and many other signs (ties, triplet beaming, reharsal signs, corona, etc.).

The output of TabStaff looks cahotic and thick of information. Modern musicans don't like it, because there's a lot of information which is unnecessary and noisy: for example, they don't need note duration, as they can listen to the recorded music to understand how the music is actually played.
Also, in the professional editions of modern manuals usually you can find a Staff above the TabStaff. In the TabStaff there's just the basic information needed to the musician to play the piece of music: which string and fret, which effect (slide, hammeron, pulloff, arpeggio, etc.). So tablature must have a concise and basic look. Whereas additional information can be placed in a staff above the TabStaff: so there we'll have the note duration and the signs which are hidden in TabStaff, and we may add other information, such as right hand and left hand fingering.

The new tablature support - LilyPond =>2.13.4

Marc Hohl, an expert user of the LilyPond community, committed himself to creating a configuration file which allowed any tablature user to get the desired output without being forced to tweak the source file each time. Since the last spring he has submitted his changes to the users' testing and expert developers' assessment, until a great result was achieved.
The file is called tablature.ly and you can find one of the latest versions here.
That file may be of interest just for those who need using the current stable version of LilyPond (2.12.x).

I strongly recommend all the other people to use the last development version, starting by 2.13.4, which was the first to include the patches of Marc into the core of the program (in a GNU/Linux system you can find the main configuration file for tablature here: ~/usr/share/lilypond/current/scm/tablature.scm).
If you use LilyPond version >2.13.4, you get the following advantages:

• no need to include an external file (as it happened with 2.12.x and tablature.ly)
• new features in any new version, while of course tablature.ly has been withdrawn
• you can help developers to find bugs and therefore emprove it more quickly
• .. and, by the way, we'll have a stable version soon or later ;-) - the next stable will be 2.14.x (as it's usual for the Free Software world, the even version number refers to the stable version)

You can download a .pdf which shows the new default output for tablatures - compared to the old one (which can still be enabled with the command \tabFullNotation) - and the features supported at the moment.
This is a summary of current tablature features:

• removed unnecessary stuff in TabStaff
• slides, non legato slide, slide from/into, arpeggio
• palm mute, dead notes
• several default guitar tunings (standard, dropped D, open G, open D, DADGAD, asus4, lute) as well as for bass, banjo and mandolin

The next step will be providing support for hammer-on/pull-off and bendings. So stay tuned!

I do thank a lot Marc Hohl for the great work and the patience shown in answering the questions and requests from users, who often ask for the most weird things ;-). By the way, there is a specific mailing list for tablature users: http://lists.lilynet.net/tablatures/

I will soon write a tutorial conceived for newbies who want to get quickly acquainted with LilyPond. And it will be specifically addressed to tablature users.
Good music!