Font switching docs - add a font to LilyPond?

[Urs Liska]

Hi all,


Abraham has sent me documentation for his recent font switch improvement 
to incorporate into LilyPond's manuals.
However, there is one issue I'd like to sort out before I start editing 
the .itely files.

Of course the documentation gives an example of the use of the new font 
selection function. But this will require the used font(s) to be 
installed on the build system because otherwise the build will fail.
I see the following ways to deal with that situation and would like to 
get your opinion about it.

1)
work around that by *not* providing a working (i.e. autocompiling) example.
That could mean providing a listing and a static image.

2)
work around that by only linking to fonts.openlilylib.org and a working 
example there.

3)
Make at least one additional font a requirement for the build system.

4)
Include at least one additional font into LilyPond's distribution and 
use that for the example.


I don't like 1) and 2) at all!

3) would be OK, but I don't have a clue how that would have to be done.

4) would  be my favourite, and I'd suggest LilyJAZZ for that (as it's 
the most obviously different font with the most obvious use case as an 
alternative).
The problem I see with that is that the alternative fonts are not 
available as source code so we'd have to include the binary files. I 
don't think that's a licensing issue but of course it could become an 
issue of maintenance some day (if Emmentaler should introduce 
incompatible changes).

So I would prefer going for 4), but I don't know how to do that.
Obviously the files would have to be added to the repository and at some 
step during the build process be copied to the font directories.

What do you think?

Urs