Re: [Denemo-devel] microtonal accidentals

[Richard Shann]

On Sun, 2018-04-08 at 23:25 -0400, Freeman Gilmore wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sun, Apr 8, 2018 at 11:41 AM, Richard Shann <address@hidden
> om> wrote:
> > On Sun, 2018-04-08 at 09:04 -0400, Freeman Gilmore wrote:
> > > Off topic:  Does Denemo use the fonts Fata and Bravura; if so, do
> > > they use the same Unicode?   I suspect that the microtonal
> > > accidentals use a mix of Unicode glyphs from different sections
> > of
> > > the code.
> > 
> > I presume you are not really trying to find out what fonts Denemo
> > uses
> > but what LilyPond uses, because (I hope) you are mainly interested
> > in
> > what the final typesetting will look like. Denemo has a font of its
> > own
> > for displaying things to the user, these are designed to make it
> > clear
> > what is on the screen. Denemo also uses LilyPond's fonts for glyphs
> > it
> > doesn't have specialized versions of - such as that sharp sign with
> > one
> > vertical and three diagonal slashes. But you could invoke any other
> > font if you wished (someone did that for the dynamics indications
> > f,
> > ff, mp, ppp etc though quite why I've never been sure). You can
> > also
> > tell LilyPond to use alternative fonts, but for information on that
> > you
> > would need to look at the LilyPond documentation.
> > 
> > But so far you haven't indicated that you have tested out
> > LilyPond's
> > capabilities for generating the sort of microtonal notation you
> > want to
> > see - it would seem there are many notations in use, so you will
> > want
> > to be sure that LilyPond can do what *you* want - I don't suppose
> > you
> > want to write Turkish music... I just chose that as an example from
> > the
> > LilyPond docs.
> > 
> > Richard
> > 
> > 
> 
> Richard:
> 
> I believe Lilypond uses both Fata and Bravura.

No, LilyPond has its own fonts, Denemo has got two of them feta.ttf and
emmentaler.ttf in its own distribution which it uses for the Denemo
Display. If you look at 

Help->Browse Feature Packed Score 

the last movement of that score shows the glyphs from the LilyPond
fonts that Denemo can display. However the LilyPond fonts that Denemo
has are not, I think, the most recent versions of LilyPond's fonts.
Denemo only has them to let the user know see an approximate typeset in
the Denemo Display, it is LilyPond that does the actual typesetting
with its up-to-date fonts.

>     I like the looks of bravura font and it has a several sets of
> accidentals you name it plus the standard Unicode accidentals as well
> all with afferent glyph code.    If Lilypond is using Bravura it may
> be able to use all the accidentals as well.   And I know that the use
> a name for them but I wanted to know if inside the code the name
> refers to the Unicode.   I have went through many of the references,
> including the developers, and found little on microtonal accidentals.
>   I did find the Turkish accidental the ones that you sent plus a
> very few parts others in the same place.   I know that Graham Breed
> did some work on the Extended Helmholtz-Ellis, but it is not there. 
> He said it used Unicode but, I think he said it was its own Unicode
> code but he was not clear.  He got the font from someone else and may
> have got the code also and it could be the same one that Bravura
> uses, lots of contributors.   Bravura is the default font for
> the privet use area U+E000 to F8FF.  
> 
> Could you direct me to the accidentals that Lilypond uses?

http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.18/Documentation/notation/the-feta-font

is as much as I know. The LilyPond mailing list address@hidden
is extremely active and the folk there would know all about LilyPond
and fonts. In particular, if you post an example showing the range of
microtonal symbols you want to typeset they will be very eager to
develop simple samples of LilyPond syntax that does what you want.
Armed with that you might want to tell Denemo to generate the syntax
needed, but that is the second stage.
> 
> BTW I did get Denemo running took some time
On Windows especially the first time you run Denemo it can spend an
extraordinarily long time caching fonts - the feta and emmentaler fonts
are designed with different glyphs depending on the final point-size
required and there is a lot of work goes on the first time LilyPond is
initialized.

>  and a second down load.   It did not make a Denemo icon in the start
> menu but it made all the rest. 
I presume you mean the very latest version 2.2.7? This will not make
any start icon I think, because it is not installed, it can reside
entirely on an external USB stick etc. Did you notice if it left a
black console window open while the program was running?


>   I played around with the with the accidental and made a button. 

Is that to say you made a palette button that would run the script I
sent when clicked?


> tried several things to cause it not to work.
> 
> The note past to Lilypond may have 4 parts/variables: note name,
> accidental, octave, duration.   There is no space between the
> variables so this string is not nested Scheme code? 

It is LilyPond's syntax for a note, everything except the note name is
optional, the defaults being the natural accidental, the octave below
middle C (unless in relative mode when the default is relative to the
last note) and the duration of the last note. LilyPond reads this and
decides what should be typeset. By including "makam.ly" LilyPond
expects "k" as a possible accidental and will typeset the glyph it has
for that.

>   Python handles this?

Python is not used in LilyPond itself, only some converter programs
like midi2ly and so on. The parsing of LilyPond syntax is handled in
C++ and Scheme. But, again, this is not the mailing list for LilyPond
questions - anything you read here may be just a fuzzy understanding of
LilyPond, there are a dozen or so experts on the workings of LilyPond
on their list, only too happy to see more music typeset by LilyPond.

HTH

Richard