lilypond-user
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: many users don't know about \shape


From: David Kastrup
Subject: Re: many users don't know about \shape
Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 08:58:08 +0200
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3.50 (gnu/linux)

Janek Warchoł <address@hidden> writes:

> 2013/5/10 David Kastrup <address@hidden>:
>> Janek Warchoł <address@hidden> writes:
>>> I'm wondering whether we should advertise \shape more.  It's
>>> tremendously helpful, and yet despite it had been added ~1 year ago
>>> (IIRC) many users don't know about it.
>>
>> I'm somewhat dubious about "tremendously helpful" as it defeats
>> automated typesetting.
>
> I'm 100% for automated typesetting: it's my dream and the very reason
> why i'm using LilyPond.
> However, my experience (particularly with Fried project) shows that
> with regard to slurs and ties, LilyPond is very far from automated
> typesetting. If you want publication quality, you _have_ to tweak the
> output quite heavily - would you rather do this via setting
> control-points directly?  Actually, \shape is quite close to the
> spirit of automated engraving, because if the layout changes slightly,
> \shape modifications usually "adapt" and still produce good results.

Not if there is a change in line/page breaking.

> Even with \shape, correcting ties and slurs is still the most
> time-consuming task in preparing the Fried material for publication.
> Quite frankly, if we didn't have \shape, i'd say that LilyPond was
> incapable of handling Fried project :(
>
>> And "had been added ~1 year ago" is a short time.
>
> Well, to look from a different perspective: if there were any pieces i
> had engraved without using \shape (since it was added to LilyPond),
> they most probably didn't contain any slurs at all.

Or the post processing would have been done using inkscape or some
similar tool...  At any rate, \shape is no substitute to fixing
LilyPond's typesetting of slurs.  It's a stop-gap measure tied into a
particular version of LilyPond and loosely tied into a particular
version of a score.  Which may sometimes cause less work than fixups
firmly tied into a particular printing of the score (which Inkscape
touchup work is).  But it is still something you can't depend on.

-- 
David Kastrup



reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]