Re: Lilypond SVG output

[Benjamin Esham]

Benjamin Esham wrote:

> [how to get usable SVG output from LilyPond]

I neglected to mention two things...

First, there are still some symbols (such as the piano-staff brace) that do
not show up in Inkscape.  I'm not sure whether this is a LilyPond issue, a
font issue, or an Inkscape issue (although I did try playing around with the
font on the brace's text object and that did not help).

The second is a larger issue.  In order for anyone else to be able to make
use of a LilyPond SVG file, it is necessary to convert all of the text to
paths.  (In Inkscape, this is accomplished with the "Convert to Path"
command.)   Due to the way LilyPond exports its SVG stuff, every single
object is placed in its own group.  Usually, you'd be able to "Select All",
"Ungroup", and "Convert to Path" in order to get the text out of groups and
to convert it into paths.

However, when you actually do that, there's a curious effect: all of the
staff lines disappear!  It turns out that each of those groups actually
contained some style information that transformed or scaled its contents in
some way.  For example, the staff lines are initially very, very thin; only
after the transformation is applied do they become visible at all.

The result here is that while doing an "Ungroup" on the note heads,
accidentals, etc. has no apparent effect, there are serious effects if you
try to do it to staff lines, beams, and possibly some other simple shapes
like those.  The end result is that in order to make LilyPond's SVG output
usable by anyone else, you must select each note head and accidental in the
piece and perform an "Ungroup" and a "Convert to Path".  Needless to say,
this is nigh-unthinkable for any music longer than a snippet.

I think that the best solution to this issue would be to apply the
transformation information to the objects directly instead of wrapping them
with groups.  That way, a simple "Select All" and "Convert to Path" would
make a LilyPond SVG file readable by anyone.

Any workarounds would be greatly appreciated!  Any patches to LilyPond would
be *tremendously* appreciated ;-)

Cheers and HTH,
-- 
Benjamin D. Esham
E-mail/Jabber: address@hidden | AIM bdesham128 | PGP D676BB9A
"The silent h is very flexible.  When I'm talking, I'll toss in a
silent h every third syllable, and no one seems to mind.  I'm not
trying to show off by doing it.  I just like the way it doesn't
sound."                                            — Scott Adams