Re: flags, beams and stem length in forced directions - output improvement

[Carl Sorensen]

On 12/27/10 7:38 AM, "Janek Warchoł" <address@hidden>
wrote:

> 2010/12/27 Carl Sorensen <address@hidden>:
>> Janek,
>> 
>> I appreciate your work.  And I appreciate your raising the issue.
>> (...) [But]
>> The *only* way for you to guarantee it is solved is for *you* to do the work.
> 
> That's exactly what i expect! I'll try to solve it, as hard as i can.
> (The only thing that worries me is that my programming skills are not
> high... i only hope that i picked an issue that is not very difficult
> to solve)

I haven't looked carefully at this issue, so I don't know how hard it will
be to solve.  But I don't think it's hugely difficult.

And the community is very helpful to new (or experienced) developers.  Just
this week I got two questions answered for a development project I was
working on...

> 
>> If you do it, you can guarantee it's done the way you like it.
> 
> Did i understand you correctly? Are you saying that i don't have to
> ask the community how they want it to be solved (i mean, what output
> they want)?
> The reason why I started this thread was essentially because i wanted
> to know the community's opinion (and achieve a consensus about the
> desired LilyPond behaviour) *before* beginning the work myself. :) I'd
> prefer not to write a patch and have it rejected :)

Well, in order to get it accepted in the official code, you clearly need the
support of the community.  But if you're interested in something that the
community disagrees with, you can always maintain your patch and get it just
the way you like it.

> 
>> Another way might be to recruit somebody else to join the developer pool.
>> Do you have friends who are interested in both music and programming?  Might
>> one of them be willing to join the development team?
> 
> The ones i can think of are currently too busy and not excited enough
> about having beautiful scores instead of ugly ones... :( Yes, they use
> default finale output and don't care about it - sad... I'm trying to
> convince them by marking finale's mistakes (this results in my copies
> of the scores being covered in red).
> 
> Thanks for your answer :)
> And please say what do you think about scaling those flags.

So far, I don't know.  I want to see what the reference books have to say (I
have copies of Stone, Ross, and Read in my ofice).  I clearly prefer not
having the flags collide with the note head or the staff line.  But I'm not
sure that I prefer the particular method of making it work.  IIRC, the
references say to lengthen the stem to make room for the flags.  I might
prefer a solution of lengthening adjacent unflagged stems to match.  But I
need to do more research.

Thanks,

Carl