Re: New to LilyPond. Customizing Lilypond Graphics.

[Erik Sandberg]

On Saturday 26 November 2005 08.13, Anthony Bargnesi wrote:
> Hello Lilypond developers,
>
> This is the first I am hearing of lilypond.  Recently it was mentioned in
> linux journal and I was curious if this could be used for a project I want
> to do.  I want to create an application to produce scores for turntablists
> based on the Turntablist Transcription
> Method<http://www.battlesounds.com/ttm/>.
> This would require all new graphics for the different types of turntable
> scratches and mixing techniques.  Since I am new to the development of
> lilypond could someone point me to resources or state how I can go about
> adding code for new graphics?  

Is it possible to create a score containing both a turntable staff and a 
"conventional" staff? In this case, it could be sensible to add turntable 
support for lilypond.

To me, there seems to be one problem: It seems that this turntable notation is 
a strictly proportional notation; i.e., the width on paper of a bar is always 
proportional to the time it takes to play it (or, in other words, the 
horizontal gap between two 16th beats is always equal within one system). 
Lilypond has some support for proportional notation, but the program's 
algorithms are highly optimised for non-proportional notation (as this is how 
most music conventionally is notated).

> Also a few questions that might be off-topic 
> but while I should ask them now before I dive into some proof of concept
> code:
>
> 1.  Since lilypond is released under the GPL would it be ok to create a new
> build of lilypond that included my custom graphics?  The application I was
> planning on making would be open source.

This depends on which license you plan to use for your application. If you're 
going to use GPL, then it's OK (you don't even need to ask us before you 
fork). There are however other open source licenses that aren't compatible 
with GPL (so it would be a copyright infringement if you combined lilypond 
with code restricted by those licenses). 

Here's a list of licenses along with their relations to GPL:
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/index_html
Here's a good FAQ about the GPL:
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html

> 2.  How can lilypond .ly files be rendered in a GUI.  Is there any tools
> that build in a .ly viewer and not render to postscript?  Since my efforts
> are for a interactive application I would need to render the lilypond file
> as I go and potentially modify it.

It is a difficult task to make lilypond interactive. One possibility is to 
create a GUI that exports lilypond files (if you want to base this gui on an 
existing product, then I suspect that rosegarden, MusE and denemo could be 
good candidates, but I don't really know)

-- 
Erik