Re: Can You Help Me?

[Jan Nieuwenhuizen]

Mark McKean writes:

Hi Mark,

> Please see attached PDF. Thank you.

Next time, please post questions like these to address@hidden
[cc'd], and use plain text instead of PDF?  Thanks.

I'm cc'ing your question and answer to the list so that it may help
others who are looking for a similar thing.

> I engrave and typeset music professionally. I use several high-end
> software programs but have not used LilyPond until now. LilyPond is
> a remarkable program!

Thanks!

> I am currently learning its syntax by reading carefully through the
> PDF user manual. I have one problem concerning the tablature staff
> that I have not been able to solve, and am writing in the hope you
> can advise me.

> The default TAB glyph is very aesthetic and useful:

  [picture of our lovely TAB glyph] ;-)
  Ex. 1

> However, I have need for a modern font face like this:

  -----
  -T---
  -A---
  -B---
  -----
  Ex. 2

> The best I have been able to do so far in LilyPond is like this:

    ---
  T ---
  A ---
  B ---
    ---
  Ex. 3

> I have been unable to simply replace the default glyph (Ex. 1) with
> the text string “TAB” so that “TAB” appears on the staff (like
> Ex. 2). The best I have been able to do is suppress the default
> glyph and make the word “TAB” an instrument name (Ex. 3), which
> places the word to the left of the staff, not on it. Is there a way
> to code LilyPond to put the modern-font “TAB” text string onto the
> staff (like Ex. 2)? If not, is it possible to create an additional,
> new TAB glyph with the modern font face without requiring an
> entirely new build? I would be happy to do this and contribute it to
> you, but I have never created fonts and am not sure how to
> proceed. Can you help me? Thank you very much.

Is this what you are looking for, see `stencil-hacking' or the
wilhelmus example?

    TAB = \markup {
      \raise #1.5 {
        \override #'(font-family . sans)
        \bold\huge
        \override #'(baseline-skip . 2.5)
        \column {
          \line { "T" }
          \line { "A" }
          \line { "B" }
        }
      }
    }


    \context TabStaff {
      \override Staff.Clef #'stencil = #ly:text-interface::print
      \override Staff.Clef #'text = #TAB
      a
    }

Jan.

-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <address@hidden> | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jantien       | http://www.lilypond.org