Re: Engraving essay questions and RFC

[Andrew Hawryluk]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 3:59 PM, Jonathan Wilkes <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 22:18:12 -0600
>> From: Andrew Hawryluk <address@hidden>
>> Subject: Engraving essay questions and RFC
>> To: lilypond-devel <address@hidden>
>> Message-ID:
>>     <address@hidden>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>>
>
> Hi Andrew,
>     This looks great to me- I like seeing Lilypond compared to several
> other editions of the same piece at the end.
>     I just have one comment about the following:
>
>> - Finale’s beamed stems are almost always too long when
>> they extend
>> off the staff.
>
> Your benchmarking method currently takes the default output and compares it 
> to classic engravings.  But this means you're considering things
> like the "Patterson Beams" plugin in Finale a tweak; yet it is an
> automated tool that takes two or three mouse-clicks and is a standard part
> of the engraving process for any serious Finale user.

Yes, I do consider "Patterson Beams" a tweak, but it would be worth
stating this explicitly in the text. My reasoning is that the plugin
is an additional step I have to remember before I print the score, and
if I do any additional note editing, the edited regions revert to
Finale's default beams (IIRC). The same thing is certainly true about
horizontal note-spacing adjustments, and it drives me nuts (I refer to
"beat spacing" with the measure tool). When working in Finale, I have
to always follow an optimum order of operations, e.g. "Oh, that alto
stem collides with the lyrics, but I don't want to fix it now because
I haven't selected the best line breaks yet and I can't choose the
best inter-stave spacing until then. I hope I'll still remember this
collision is there before I upload it."

> Also, I really think it would be helpful to additionally show fully
> tweaked versions of both the Finale and Lilypond scores, to give an idea
> of the techniques/time necessary to get optimal output in both pieces of
> software.  I think I can get a copyist to do this on the Finale
> side if you're interested.

I was going to remark that some fine-tuning can bring either score
into conformance with the engraved editions, but actually doing it
would be more convincing, no? I have a tiny adjustment to make on the
Finale score, but once I've done it I can send you the file.

Thanks for your input,
Andrew

> -Jonathan
>
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