Re: Band parts - a newbie's view

[Graham Percival]

On 27-Jul-04, at 4:18 PM, Anthony W. Youngman wrote:
> I've put all the header info - title, composer etc into a "header.ly"
> file. I include this in a part file, followed by a "header { instrument
> = }" section. This second header section appears to wipe the first :-(
> at any rate, all I get is the instrument name and everything else is
> lost. Commenting out the second section means the first one appears ...

AFAIK, that's a bug.  I've encountered it.  Some of the changes in the
2.3 devel series may have fixed this one, though.

> And the instrument is in the wrong place ... it gets put in the middle
> of the header :-( As far as I'm concerned, on a part it belongs left
> justified just above the first stave, and presumably on a score it
> belongs just above or to the left of the relevant stave.

Quick hack: instead of using "instrument", how about using "piece" or
a different lilypond header?  :)

Another option would be to use lilypond-book -- lilypond stuff inserted
into a LaTeX document.  I've found that while Lilypond is good for small
pieces and rough copies, when I want to make a final, publishable copy,
I need the extra power of lilypond-book.

> Okay - having moaned - how do I fix this the way I want? Do I need to
> install source or can it be done in Scheme as part of the standard user
> install? And if I need the source, what language is it? C++? I want to
> make the header print the way I want :-), and I presume I need to add a
> Staff.Instrument property to get that to print properly in a score...

I'll let a programmer answer this one, other than mentioning 
lilypond-book
again.

> Another annoying thing when trying to produce parts ... I've found that
> putting time signatures, speed markings etc in a separate "part" is
> great for getting timings right etc. Unfortunately, it seems that "s"
> and "\skip" are classed as notes, so when I try to collapse bars with
> the R syntax in the part, it doesn't work :-( (as an aside, how do I do
> multi-bar rests with a time signature of eg 9/8? Does R1*9/8*n work?)

I'm pretty sure that R1*9/8*n works.  And if for some reason it doesn't,
I know that R8*9*n works.

> The other is, if I ask for a time signature of 3/4, that's what I get.
> Or 9/8. Or 6/8. Or 5/4 or almost anything. But if I ask for 2/2 or 4/4,
> then that's what I DON'T get. Bad bad bad! If I want common or
> cut-common, then I should be able to ask for that directly. And in my
> experience 4/4 and common are not the same thing - I often play pieces
> that have both ...

Lilypond defines 4/4 and C as the same[1], but if you want to see 4/4 
instead
of C, use:
\override Staff.TimeSignature   #'style = #'numbered

[1] and therefore changing that would require a patch

> Have any of these points been addressed post 2.2.2? And if not, where
> and how do I go about "fixing" them?

Right now most effort is focused on the devel branch, so if you want to
fix issues, that's probably the best place to go.  It also includes new 
code
for slurs, which take into account articulations and fingerings; devel 
also
has quite a few page output improvements.

Cheers,
- Graham