Re: using lilypond tab for French lute tab

[Laura Conrad]

>>>>> "Jan" == Jan Nieuwenhuizen <address@hidden> writes:

    Jan> so you'll have to use LilyPond's \override mechanism with
    Jan> extra-offset.

Thanks, that works. 

I now have two measures that look pretty much like Dowland printed
them:

example.ly
Description: Text document

I think it might make sense to put this in the Templates directory as
french_lute_tab.ly or something.  It was a lot of work.

Someone with more energy for dealing with lily internals than I have
at the moment, who really wanted to implement French Lute tab in Lily,
would get rid of the TabStemsContext kludge.  Instead, there should be
a TabStaff.stems property which should cause the stems (which are not
going to differ from the length of tab notes) be automatically printed
above the staff, with a quarter of the note value.  There could also
be an option for whether to print stems which repeat the previous note
value, as the transcription of "Flow my tears" did, or to leave them
out, as Dowland did.

Using a font more like the original for printing the letters, as
abctab2ps does, would be an aesthetic improvement, but probably not a
functional one.  Reading Dowland's letters isn't a problem when you
know what they are, but until someone tells you, you probably wouldn't
ever guess what his squiggle for "e" means, and you feel insecure
about the "c".  If someone does feel like fiddling with this, look at
the font in abctab2ps, which is quite readable, but still has the
flavor of the 16th century.

-- 
Laura (mailto:address@hidden , http://www.laymusic.org/ )
(617) 661-8097  fax: (801) 365-6574 
233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139
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