Re: Organ pedalboard fingerings

[Carl Sorensen]

On 12/16/10 5:16 AM, "Bertrand Bordage" <address@hidden> wrote:

> Hello frogs (although I am French, I won't eat you) !
> 
> First of all, a huge thanks to the team for allowing us to freely use the
> overall best music engraving software :p
> 
> I would like to report a tiny weakness I noticed.
> It seems to me that LilyPond's standard fingerings for organ pedalboard are
> incorrect.
> 
> Instead of this :
> 
> { \clef F a4\ltoe a\lheel a\rtoe a\rheel }
> 
> We should have this:
> 
> { \clef F a4_\rtoe a\lheel a\rtoe a^\lheel }

It would be good to change the documentation to reflect this usage if it's
standard modern usage.

> 
> These fingerings are schematic representation of a foot. That's why they
> shouldn't be directed according to their position (above or below the staff).
> Fixed and opposite directions can also avoid any mistake when reading quickly
> handwritten fingerings.

> Especially since most publishers, I think, uses this behavior.

The problem with your patch is the idea that "most" publishers use this
behavior.  This means that some may not.  Therefore, we should not eliminate
the other notation from the font.


> On the web I only found these examples, but I can assure you I saw this
> notation in many other scores :
> 
> http://www.bodensee-musikversand.de/notenbeispiele/108056.jpg
> http://www.bodensee-musikversand.de/notenbeispiele/108452.jpg
> http://www.bodensee-musikversand.de/notenbeispiele/108452_midi.gif

This link shows that pedal indications have not always been the same:

http://www-scf.usc.edu/~eunjeonp/contents%204.htm

> 
> I made a patch that removes the 2 useless definitions in mf/feta-scripts.mf
> and update scm/script.scm.

Given that there is the possibility of using the inverted symbols, I don't
believe we should remove them from the font.  I don't think they're useless.
I think they're just non-standard.

I suppose that there is some argument for changing the names of the scripts,
e.g. from \rtoe to \stdtoe, and from \ltoe to \invtoe, with corresponding
changes to heel.  But this discussion should by part of the GLISS
discussion, to be held after 2.14 is out.

Thanks,

Carl