Re: SacredHarpHeads: possible solution to major/minor problem

[Neil Puttock]

On 23/04/2008, Adrian Mariano <address@hidden> wrote:
> I think your approach is reasonable.  (It should handle the dorian mode
> properly.)  I tested it in minor mode and dorian mode on some stuff I have
> handy and everything looked good.  As it happens, I have nothing typed in in
> the major, so I did a less rigorous test there and didn't see any problems.

I've tested it on every key, swapping between major and minor, without
encountering any problems; it seems to work fine even for outlandish
keys with double flats and sharps.

>  I did have one problem initially where I got random (?) shape assignments.

That's a bit worrying. Can you post a minimal example for this?

As I mentioned in the limitations, the only situation I've seen where
it won't work is something like this:

\relative c' {
 % no explicit Staff context, so default tonic not set
  \sacredHarps
 % shapeNoteStyles not set, standard glyphs used for note heads
  c d e f g a b c
}

> This was because the \sacredHarps command appeared before the \key command
> so (presumably) no tonic was defined.  It definitely does seem like an error
> message would be good.   It appears that the main disadvantage of this
> approach over the two commands approach is the need to position the command
> more carefully.

If the limitation with MIDI can be overcome, then an error message
would certainly be desirable; it might be a good idea to set the major
sacred harp head style as a default at the same time.

I'm afraid the positioning limitation is unavoidable since there's no
callback involved in setting shapeNoteStyles; it would have to be
hard-coded in the engraver to overcome this.

Regards,
Neil