RE: some questions

[Michael Lakes]

> From: sdf sdfs <address@hidden>
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: some questions
> Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 23:05:51 -0400 (EDT)
>
> Hi,

Hello :-)

> I'm new to Lilypond, but I am loving it already, and
> very impressed by the output quality.

Yeah, it's pretty good.

> 1)I was taught that under most circumstances, the
> length of a note's stem must be at least an octave,
> however, this does not seem to be the case by default
> in Lilypond. Is this correct? If so, how can I
> override the default settings?

Yeah, it should be an octave.  Lilypond is doing it correctly for me 
(version 2.2.2).  Do you have more than one voice in a staff?  If you do, 
then stems should be shorter than an octave if they're forced to a direction 
other than what they normally would be.  But, Lilypond does shorten them too 
much when they're not far from their normal position.  You can adjust it 
with:
\override Stem #'stem-shorten = #'(1.0 0.5)
Lower the numbers in the parenthesis so the stems wouldn't be shorten too 
much.  I think the first number is for no flags in stems, the other for 
flags.  You should probably only enter these kind of adjustments after you 
finish enter all the notes and check that they're correct (if not it will 
look very cluttered and hard to find notes as you try to correct them, 
speaking from experience :p).  You can find more info about stems and 
setting them here:
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.2/Documentation/user/out-www/lilypond-internals/Stem.html

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