Re: al niente / de niente - was Re: (no subject)

[Marcus Macauley]

Mats Bengtsson wrote:

> Quoting Marcus Macauley <address@hidden>:
>
> > As an alternative to the second method -- and a perhaps more  
> > conventional  one, recommended by Kurt Stone -- niente can be notated  
> > not with the  dynamic letter "n" but with the italic "n." (this time  
> > with a period).  This should be possible to do now, but I can't figure  
> > out how to switch  off the boldface:
> >
> > n = #(make-dynamic-script (markup #:text #:italic "n." ) ) % This  
> > makes  the text bold-italic.
> >
> > n = #(make-dynamic-script (markup #:text "n." ) ) % In fact, even this   
> > makes it bold-italic, as if that's the default text font style. Why?  
> > And  how to switch it off?
>
> The simple reason is that dynamics by default have bold face turned on.  
> For situations like these, where you want tobe sure
> to first reset all font related properties before starting applying your  
> own preferences, the markup command \normal-text was introduced
> in version 2.7. So you should be able to do something like
> n = #(make-dynamic-script (markup #:normal-text #:italic "n." ) )

Ah, yes, that works. The last thing I saw on in the email list archives  
about it was a comment, by you, I think, that a command like \normal-text  
would be useful (it presumably hadn't been implemented at the time).

Another way to do it, I've found, is...

n = #(make-dynamic-script (markup #:text #:medium #:italic "n.") )

...where #:medium is the regular (not-bold) weight of the font. (Likewise,  
as Han-Wen pointed out on lilypond-devel, you can use #:upright to cancel  
#:italic). I like your solution better, though - it could conceivably be  
used where you're unsure of what the default font style is, and you just  
want to clear all formatting and then specify only what you want.

Thanks for the tip.

Marcus