Re: Feedback on lilypondblog article

[Urs Liska]

Hi Joram,

thank you for the feedback. It is warmly welcomed although most of it 
isn't really new to me. But if I didn't document it in places where 
you'd find the information it is my fault ;-)

Am 14.04.2015 um 19:54 schrieb Noeck:
> Hi Urs, Abraham, Kieren, et al,
>
> I tried be interfaces described here:
> http://lilypondblog.org/2015/03/managing-alternative-fonts-with-lilypond/
> It is a very nice idea, it works for me now and I am really excited how
> easy it is. The whole library approach is something I am looking forward
> to.
>
> I realized some smaller issues when using it and I hope you are
> interested at least in some of them. Should I write them here or to you
> personally or enter as a github issue? This time here:
>
>
>
> 1. Font changes do not work when followed by a set-global-staff-size.
> This is probably hard to get around but it should be documented that the
> order matters.

This is documented on fonts.openlilylib.org.
But you're right, it should be documented again in the openlilylib context.

> 2. The Beethoven stylesheet changes quite a lot of settings (including
> spacing). I tried all the fonts on a piano score: The other font changes
> work well and the output still looks good. But the Beethoven font breaks
> the layout because it requires more space. How about different
> stylesheets for Beethoven: One for a simple font/style change like for
> other fonts and one for the complete “Henle impression”?

That's the idea. Actually the stylesheet isn't ready to be merged to 
master yet but more or less literally copied from Kieren's original 
Henle stylesheet. I don't recall exactly why I decided to merge it, but 
I definitely didn't expect anyone to look so closely so early ;-)

The default stylesheet for switching the font should always only do what 
is strictly necessary to adapt the overall appearance to the font. 
Everything else should be the responsibility of the "stylesheet" part of 
that library. Which hasn't been implemented at all yet, not even started.

> 3. If I have a font in my LP installation which I can use in a paper
> block (like described on fonts.openlilylib.org), I can not use it
> automatically with the library – I have to add a file in the stylesheets
> folder with that name, even though it may be empty. Could a fallback
> solution be added here, that one can use an installed font without a
> stylesheet?

Are you talking of fonts that are available from fonts.openlilylib.org?
If yes, this is either a bug or (hopefully) you don't have the latest 
version of openLilyLib checked out. All fonts from the official 
repository should have a default (even if empty) stylesheet present.

Apart from that there _is_ a fallback solution: You can write
\useNotationFont \with {
  style = none
} Beethoven

to skip the inclusion of the default stylesheet.
This is described in more detail in the (pending) second post.

If there is a real chance that one day people use alternative fonts that 
are _not_ part of fonts.openlilylib.org we should of course add a 
default fallback solution.

> 4. The same, if there is no -brace font, the emmentaler brace font could
> be assumed without having to copy the emmentaler brace font to
> fontname-brace.otf.

Hm, this again makes me think you're not using the latest openLilyLib. 
There is the corresponding fallback as with the stylesheet, but in 
addition it handles missing -brace fonts by printing a warning and using 
Emmentaler.
This check had in fact been there right from the start, but I didn't 
properly do the lookup, so I fixed it in
https://github.com/openlilylib/openlilylib/commit/b1b65e3439c0e05c69a9d4f47f5c928dbe5f82cc

> 5. Some thoughts/discussion might be needed for text font handling:
> Currently, the lilyJAZZText/Chord font is not used automatically even
> thouth it belongs to the jazz style. On the other hand, the Beethoven
> stylesheet also changes the text font to match the Henle style for
> instance. This comes back to the question (2): Is \useNotationFont
> selecting a font (including line thickness) or is it selecting a whole
> style to match Henle or Peters Edition or what ever style. I would
> suggest to separate these two aims.

That's correct.
ad 2) as admitted this is not properly cleaned up yet.
The handling of text fonts hasn't been implemented at all yet, and yes, 
it should be discussed.
I think that the appropriate text fonts should be loaded automatically, 
but only as an option.

But I suggest to wait with this discussion until the second post is 
published because this discusses the "advanced" interface to font 
handling, and the text handling should be considered in that context.
Maybe you could put your thoughts into an issue in the meantime?

> 6. The font install script could accept several destination paths to
> install fonts in a list of lilypond directories (like
> lilypond-2*/lilypond). That's something I could do, should I?

Yes, this is already on my wishlist.
But I'm not sure if I understand you correctly: you can already pass a 
list of directories to handle multiple installations at once. And you 
can pass a file containing such a list.
What you can't do yet is to use wild card search, which probably is what 
you mean.

I see two ways to integrate this:
a)
interpret a directory that ends with an asterisk by iterating over all 
subdirectories.
b)
create a dedicated command line option that treats the given target 
directory as a root whose children should be searched (could still have 
the asterisk wild card).

Maybe b) is slightly easier to implement because currently the script 
aborts when a target isn't a lilypond installation. But when using an 
"all subdirectories" option any directories that don't contain a lily 
installation should silently be skipped. An error should only be raised 
when no installation is found at all.

Yes, I'd be happy to see a pull request :-)

> 7. Am I right, that to get the fonts, each zip file has to be downloaded
> individually (except wget -r etc.)? How about providing one zip file
> containing all fonts to install?

I think this would be nice, but only as an additional download. Abraham, 
what do you think about that? Auto-generating a single-file download zip 
and add it to the downloads?

When using the installation script I think it is good to have the fonts 
available as separate downloads because the script will only download 
new or updated fonts.

Best
Urs

> Thanks a lot for your work!
>
> Cheers,
> Joram
>
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--
Urs Liska
www.openlilylib.org