Bernhard Lang wrote
>How can I get a \zbreve? A pmx note word with length 9 gives a twofold
>spaced whole, not a breve. And adding a dot to this seems to mess up
>pmx's length counting in some cases.
First, let's check terminology. PMX regards a breve as a square note with
duration twice as long as a whole note. If your definition is something
else then please let me know...so far no one else has questioned the
definition I used.
It is true that PMX interprets length 9 to mean a double whole note. In
keeping with the square-root rule, the spacing it assigns is 1.414 times
that of a whole note. If you have examples to the contrary (in lines that
are not crowded) then please send the PMX source because there is a bug I
don't know about.
According to a check I just did, adding a dot to a pmx-breve does cause
unexpected results. I would hope to see a pmx-breve with a dot, spaced at
2^(1/4)=1.19 times the spacing of the square note itself. What I see is a
dotted whole note, spaced at 1.22 times the undotted breve spacing. So
there is a bug here and I'll look into it. It's actually no surprise
because I never made any provision for dotted pmx-breves.
Finally, maybe you are talking about the distinction between \breve and
\zbreve. Prior to PMX 2.2, PMX generated \zbreve\sk for pmx-breves.
MusiXTeX has been upgraded to include a "spacing breve" \breve , so now that
is the TeX command that PMX generates.
There are in-line techniques for substituting one TeX command for another.
There are also PMX commands for adding or subtracting horizontal space. In
combination, these could substitute one kind of note symbol for another and
maintain spacing according to the square root rule. If you have a
particular example I'd be glad to explain this further.
--Don Simons
