[Denemo-devel] Thumbnails

[Richard Shann]

I have started to do the print from selection stuff. I came across
something interesting: if I select the first few measures and ask it to
print from all movements it creates something very like an index - the
title and first few measures of each movement all on one page.
This got me thinking - with the excerpt command we can automatically
generate thumbnails. This will make looking for a particular example in
the gallery  or a template much easier - a .png can be displayed which
shows you what it is before you load it into denemo. This is especially
useful for special effects such as Rehearsal Marks, Multi Measure Rests
and so on, which Denemo does not itself display, but which it can create
via LilyPond inserts.
It could be also useful (looking a little ahead) to use LilyPond to
generate a png to stdout and capture it (asynchronously) in Denemo and
then have it available for display. Running in the background this at a
low nice value this give you a periodically updated preview. I don't
know if LilyPond will generate png to stdout...
Richard