Re: Shape notes

[J. David Blackstone]

I wrote:
>   Once I can compare the pitch of each note to the key, I can pick the
> shapes ... once I get a shaped-note font.  (The dependencies just keep
> snowballing!)  I've got a friend with a truetype font, but I don't think
> that will work with TeTeX.  (Anyone who corrects me will make me very
> excited.)  But if that font won't work I'm sure I can learn how to make
> one.

  Had a burst of energy and creativity tonight.  I can now do all the
processing I need for each note to decide which shape to print.  So, I
looked into lilypond/tetex font stuff for the first time.  That was a lot
more complex than I was expecting.

  I immediately despaired of using my friend's truetype shaped-note font.
But then on a whim I searched on google for "tetex truetype," and it's
possible to convert truetype fonts for tetex after all:
http://www.agh.edu.pl/pub/tex/info/TrueType/

  So, now I'll have to check on licensing restrictions.  (If I find out
these came out of Finale or something, I obviously can't distribute them
with GPL'ed software.)  Meanwhile, I may hack a very crude set of shapes to
get started.

  I'm not really to the point where I can tell the code what character to
select from the font, yet, anyway.  I can snatch the key name in the
parser.  (Hmm... I wonder what happens if it's minor.  Ick!  Best not to
think about that.)  Then I've got a relative-scale class I've put together
for giving the solfege names of notes (do re mi fa so la ti do) given the
key and a pitch.  Then, in note-heads-engraver.cc I can catch each pitch as
it goes by and determine the solfege name.  (A simplification is that I can
ignore chromatics, since "do" and "di" (do-sharp) have the same note head,
etc.)  I think I need to add a property to the note-head objects that will
store the solfege name, and then in brew_shaped_molecule (or whatever I
call it) it can use that name to determine the character from the font.

  Or something like that.  Hmmm... it sounds so easy when I just type it.

jdb