I downloaded 1.3.20 rpms and run it against one of my pieces. I notice
a couple of problems, and I have a few suggestions. (I haven't used
lilypond for some time now, so I don't know what is fixed and what is
not, and what I consider a problem could be just my preference, so
please bear with me. Some problems do not happen in the past versions,
like 0.9x or 1.0.x.)
- All the hairpins are missing (\> and \<). It doesn't matter whether I
use \> or \cr. It happens to both my music (very very simple) and the
examples, e.g. sammartini.ly
- Notes are packed tightly together on a system. What happens is that
the dynamics, articulations and such do not have enough space to align
themselves, e.g. an mf looks like covering two notes.
- Dynamics, articulations, slurs and other things collide. E.g. I could
have the end of slur, a tenuto, a pp, and possibly other stuff all
positioned in the same location. I have to manually adjust them using
the padding property.
- Similar to the above point, a fermata pointing down could appear above
a staff. I thought a fermata above a staff always points up. (The
associated note is a D above middle C in treble clef.)
- Adding a name to a staff using Staff_margin_engraver will have the
right half of the name collide into the indented staff. (The name I
tested was "Flute")
- My piece has only one staff. The barline left to the clef is always
missing. Is it the right behaviour?
- My piece is in 6/8. Auto beaming works like 4/4. \property
Voice.beamAutoEnd = "3/8" as described in the reference doesn't work,
and Voice.time6_8... generates an error.
- I tried putting my dynamics and slurs into one voice using space
notes, and the notes and articulations in the other. I merge them
together in \score using \context Staff < >. Things collide badly, so I
put everything in space notes into the melody (so there is only one
voice). Things still collide, but the positions of the ornaments are a
bit different (less jammed). Is it supposed to be different?
- Having a slur between a grace note and a regular note generates the
warning "warning: Can't find both ends of slur...[snip]...programming
error: Must set minimum distance between differing columns. (Continuing;
cross thumbs)" The slur looks very large, and the grace notes are large
too.
Now some suggestions:
- Since I consider the default typesetting too packed, I manually break
the systems into two measures per system using \break. Would it be
possible to have a property that allows me to group a fixed number of
measures into a system? E.g. \property Staff.measurePerSystem = #4
- There have been discussions about 8ve and con8ve brackets (whcih I
want very much for high register instruments), I suppose the same could
be done to pedal brackets.
- Some simple way to enter text and organize into a textbox (or
footnote, whatever) without entering painful TeX commands.
Despite of the problems and suggestions, I am still very impressed by
the concept and quality of lilypond. I brought a hardcopy of my music
to my class (with some kludges of my own to remove collision). My
classmates' first impression was "Hey, that's professional. What
software do you use?" They never heard of Linux or Lilypond, and I
introduced them the entry method as well as the website. They seemed
interested -- there exists something other than point-and-click.
If you need to see the lilypond input for my piece, I will post them on
request. Thank you very much.
Sincerely,
Desmond Lam
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
