Hi Harm, I don't really have a personal setup for mensural music. Recently I begun a project that involves a lot of mensural notation, therefore I am still learning and noticing . Usually I adjust flaws when they occur, just within the notation rather than on the layout level, but I guess this is a flaw inherent on my way of working with Lilypond, as I have never learnt it in a theoretical and comprehensive way, adjusting my learning to specific needs as per occurrence.
So far I think mensural and neomensural notation fonts to be a little unbalanced. The diamond shaped noteheads are too small, in my opinion, while the square shaped noteheads are generally good. I usually increase noteheads size, but not as much as I would, as the risk is getting breves and longae noteheads too big. I think there should be a way to selectively increase noteheads sizes, but I still have to sort out the problem. Actually, before consolidating my opinion I should try see more of it in print: so far I am just in the phase of making drafts. I also usually increase stems thickness, but, again, I should evaluate this on paper rather than on screen. Longae stems are too short, generally speaking (why are they built in the glyph??? Not that I dislike it, actually it solved so many issues I had!). The real pain comes with ligatures: I have to revert the noteheads size to default whenever I want to type ligatures, with the unnerving result that ligatures look smallish, especially compared to squared noteshapes. On the other side, if I don't revert noteheads to their normal sizes, spacing within ligatures is completely scattered. Obtaining black or half coloured ligatures is also quite painful, but I still have to study the problem a little bit closer, as I guess changing the font to black mensural should partly overcome the issue. Again, as for the font balance, I have sometimes to mix mensural and neomensural or petrucci shapes, especially for clefs and time signature symbols. Probably this is due to the fact that it is impossible to have a consistent classification of these glyphs, because I think printers of various times and locations used a variety of mixed shapes. But, again, a bass mensural clef is really too small, compared, say, to a petrucci C clef. Overall, I feel the mensural part of our feta font works better in giving the idea of a handwritten score rather than of a printed one. You also noticed dots are generally too big, and some of the alteration symbols are too small. Finally, the available repertoire of time signature symbols is not complete. I had to type a piece with many proportional changes and I finally decided to include in my scores a separate file with 20 custom time signature commands, some of them being already implemented, others being made by adding fractions to existing glyphs. Thankfully I haven't yet found a score with a double crossed time signature symbol (like a O with an X above it), but I feel this kind of symbol could be easily added to the font. In typing proportional music I prefer to use a standard 2/1 time, my custom time signature symbols and \scaleDurations accordingly. So far it has been the easiest way: still I remind myself that I have never planned one of these projects globally from scratch, but I am guilty of always working on problem by problem occurrence solutions. These are some of the features I am introducing so far in my mensural typewriting, warning that they still have to be fine tuned when proofed on paper (and printed at different sizes too): \override Stem.neutral-direction = #up \override NoteHead #'font-size = #2 \override Dots #'font-size = #-2 \override Stem.thickness = #2.0 I'd also like to hear from yours and others opinion on the topic. Andrea -- View this message in context: http://lilypond.1069038.n5.nabble.com/Double-clef-canon-tp167389p167449.html Sent from the User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user