Color one accidental in a chord? Also, improved docs ... again!

[Trevor Bača]

Hi,

First off, I am once again amazed at the incremental improvement in the docs. For example: 5.3.4 "The \tweak command". I've been working this morning on coloring one (and only one) accidental in a chord. It seemed like \tweak would be the way to do it. The \tweak command works, for example, in constructions like <c' \tweak #'color #red a'>4 to adjust the color of individual noteheads within a chord. However, I ran into the problem that \tweak decides which grob to apply to *lexically* (ie, by the bit of input syntax immediately following) which works great for noteheads, slurs and the like but doesn't work for accidentals because accidentals get created implicitly during interpretation.

So, after fiddling with \tweak for a while to color just one accidental in a chord, I'm pretty sure that \tweak won't work but I'm still not completely sure. "Am I thinking of things correctly? Or is there something easier that I'm missing?" So I click over to 5.3.4 . Not only has the section been expanded from the last time I read over it (probably more than a year ago) and not only does it read great, there is now the following language on explicit limitations of the command:

"Notably the \tweak command cannot be used to modify stems,
beams or accidentals, since these are generated later by note heads,
rather than by music elements in the input stream."

This is excellent. Not because I can't color a single accidental. But instead because *the docs are explicit enough to stop me spending any further time going down the wrong path*.

I know this seems like small point. But, to me, it is only the most professional docs that list not only what something does do ... but also what something *does not do*. (I'm reminded of "limitation of scope" sections that appear in some of the best-written  software specification docs: all software requirements docs list pages and pages of what the system shall do, but it takes someone to go the extra mile to include writing that points out limitations about what the system need not do.) Of course there's something of a tradition of this in the docs in general because of the 'known limitations and bugs' sections, which are also quite useful.

So thank you to whoever edited 5.3.4. And thanks again to the entire GDP team for the dramatic improvements in the docs generally over the last months.

Now on to my original question.

* * *

QUESTION: is it possible to reach inside of a chord and color just one accidental red?

\tweak isn't going to work, as is quite clear from the docs, and Trevor (D)'s post to this thread earlier this year in April ...

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2008-04/msg00067.html

... makes me think that the task may not be possible at all.

Does anyone have a work-around?



Trevor.




-- 
Trevor Bača
address@hidden