Re: Subject: String Concatenation, and Use of Unicode characters [sic]

On 3 Mar 2015, at 05:58, Flaming Hakama by Elaine <address@hidden> wrote:

%{

> Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2015 16:40:27 +0000
> From: Michael Hendry <address@hidden>
> Subject: String Concatenation, and Use of Unicode characters
>
> Typically, I want PDF output in three files, (Concert pitch, Bb and Eb), and I would like to modularise this as much as possible.

You will enjoy
#(define output-suffix "Instrument”)

Certainly did! Thanks.

> 2. The LilyJazzText font uses small capitals instead of lower case
> letters, so using ?Eb? produces a capital E followed by a small
> capital B. On my Mac I know how to produce a flat sign, and LilyPond
> will use the flat sign from another font, but I?d like to be able to
> define a flat sign as a variable, and append it to the piece markup
> when creating the books for trumpet and alto.

There is something called \flat. I took out the references to LilyJAZZ just to demonstrate, it should work regardless of font and I didn't have the .ily file handy.

That certainly helped. I’m being fussy now, but there’s unnecessary white-space between the “E” and the “b”. Also, I want the “Alto Sax in Eb” in a smaller font, and the \flat is bigger than I want it.

Forgive me for suggesting, but I suggest it improves mental health to think of transpose in the form:

\transpose "to" "from" \musicExpression

I used to think of the transposition in this way until I found a need to transpose the whole piece to a different key (to accommodate a singer’s range, for example), and I found the two ways of looking at transposition tied my brain in knots.

Ideally, I’d like to define the whole-piece transposition at the top of the file, rather than editing the per-instrument transposition at the point of book production.

So, Bb and Eb parts would be:

\transpose bes, c \trumpetPartConcert
\transpose es, c \altoPartConcert

instead of the cryptic:

\transpose c d' \trumpetPartConcert
\transpose c a' \altoPartConcert

Also, I took out references to \jazzOn since it didn't compile.

>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Michael Hendry

Sure, I hope this helps.

Very much so.

I’ve attached my modified version of your code, along with the necessary include files and an example of the output. I like the informal look of the Jazz fonts, but I can still be obsessional about font-size mismatches!

Michael

From:	Michael Hendry
Subject:	Re: Subject: String Concatenation, and Use of Unicode characters [sic]
Date:	Tue, 3 Mar 2015 06:56:22 +0000