Re: Lilypond lobbying?

[Joseph Wakeling]

On 08/25/2011 06:17 PM, David Kastrup wrote:
> Honestly?  Heaps of praise coupled with a diffuse "improvements might
> make things worse" may be an _elevating_ way of looking at Lilypond, but
> I consider this even less helpful than pinpointing a weakness.

I don't like "X sucks" comments -- better to understand _why_ things are
one way or another, especially when (like Lilypond) there are good
reasons.  For what it's worth, where "improvements might make things
worse" are concerned I was thinking about Lilypond getting a GUI
frontend -- easy to tweak -- but being constrained in future development
by what could be done in the GUI rather than what could be done with
text input.

But if you want examples of weaknesses:

  * Placement of ornaments that do not fall directly over a notehead.
    It's absolutely typical in classical music to have e.g. a turn
    start on the second beat of a 2nd note, but this is very difficult
    to implement well in Lilypond, as it involves both tweaking the
    horizontal offset of the ornament itself _and_ increasing the
    horizontal space assigned to the 2nd note.

  * Placement of dynamic marks that do not fall directly under a
    notehead.

  * _Easy_ attachment of extra descriptive text to dynamic marks
    (pp subito, f ma non troppo, molto p), and intelligent placement of
    those dynamic marks.  Something like \f{rtext="ma non troppo"}, or
    \p{ltext="molto"}.

  * Placement of hairpins that do not begin or end directly on a
    notehead.  There needs to be an _easy_ way to indicate
    "This crescendo starts on this note but 1 quarter-note in"
    (e.g. \<{delay=4}, \<{delay=2*8}) and possibly also "This crescendo
    continues for 7 eighth notes" instead of ending on the next \! or
    dynamic mark (e.g. \<{length=7*8} [no delayed start] or
    \<{delay=4,length=7*8} [1/4-note delayed start).

  * Angling of hairpins.  I'm not aware of any way to say
    "Non-horizontal hairpin, angle it as you see fit" to LP (would \<<
    work?), and manually tweaking the angle also needs a simple
    notation.

  * More generally, a simple "functional" notation that allows you to
    override common properties of musical objects, instead of the
    \once \override notation.  Some of what I've suggested above is
    heading in that direction, but I'm sure there's a better notation.

I'm aware that most or possibly all of these are probably non-trivial to
implement.  But all of the above notational issues are common features
of classical music, yet irritatingly difficult to achieve in Lilypond.

> Tweaking slurs might become nicer, for example, if one might tweak
> something like "slur attraction" of individual notes, telling Lilypond
> which noteheads should try pulling the slur closer.  That would likely
> beat fiddling with control points with regard to user friendliness while
> still maintaining a batchy character.

Yes, but also a simpler notation to fiddle with slur control points
directly.