> Hi gnu-music people,
>
> Every now and then I have a look at the status of the Lilypond project
> to see if it already meets my needs as a classical guitar player. It
> seems the project is coming along nicely, and I really appreciate the
> thorough approach that has been taken. There are, however, still things
> missing in the version I looked at (that came with debian 2.1,
> version 1.0.19), and I'd like to point them out. i must warn you that I
> did just look through the docs, and did not try out a lot.
It turns out that most of your dreams have come true already.
I suggest you take a look at the Lilypond home page
(http://www.lilypond.org/) and the examples and documentation
found there.
> The following things are missing:
>
> * Grace notes.
> I understand this is already in the TODO list. The greatest challenge
> is probably to have both sensible graphical _and_ sensible midi
> output. I could think of a way where there is a separate
> specification for things that should sound and things that should be
> printed. It might be possible to use this for trills and other
> ornaments as well.
A simple workaround has been available for a long time that lets you
typeset and listen to grace notes. The input syntax is not perfect,
nor is the printed layout, but it's not worse than many of the
commersial programs. There used to be an example available at the
web site. I couldn't find it now, but it's available in the file
lilypond-xx/input/test/grace.ly in the source distribution.
In general, I recommend getting the source files (of your version of
Lilypond) even if you install the Debian package, since a lot of
examples (including undocumented features) are included.
> * Different note heads. E.g., in guitar music, diamond note heads are
> used to indicate harmonics.
Some support for diamond note heads has been added. I haven't tried it
myself, though.
> * Attachement of a beam of one voice to a note head of another. In
> ascii art:
>
> __________
> | | | |
> | * * *
> O
> |
> |
>
> This is often preferred in guitar music to the alternative that has
> a rest in the upper voice. I have the impression this currently
> only works with all black note heads, and then two note heads are
> overlapping. It might be implemented using an empty note head in the
> voice with the short duration notes.
Supported! (Maybe already in 1.0.19). Just do two separate voices
with separate stem directions and one common note.
> * I also wonder if there is a way to influence the angle of beams. I
> have seen some examples of lilypond output that could vastly be
> improved by simply demanding the beams to stay horizontal.
There's been many changes to the typesetting algorithms for beams and
slurs since 1.0.19. The default layout looks better and you have a
large number of parameters to adjust if you want to change it further.
However, I'm afraid it's not so well documented yet.
> I hope I did not suggest too many things that already have been
> implemented :)
Lilypond keeps developing at a fast rate. If you don't want to
build and install the program yourself, you could get a Debian
package of Lilypond version 1.1.31 from the 'unstable' distribution
at http://www.debian.org/.
/Mats B
