Re: Microtonal Helmholtz-Ellis notation in Lilypond: fine-tuning

[Hans Aberg]

On 27 Sep 2009, at 05:36, Graham Breed wrote:

> > Thanks for the explanation. I recall that: LilyPond has more than  
> > one glyph-finding model. That was a problem with the key  
> > signatures, I think, which could not use those from external fonts.
>
> Lilypond has one glyph-finding model for accidentals, and the hooks  
> to allow us to override it.  All kinds of things are cumbersome or  
> don't work when we do so.  Grace notes are another one I noticed.

Ornaments like trills and turns are entered on the markup level, which  
is cumbersome if there are a lot of chromatic alterations. And they  
can't be output to MIDI - I think someone started to work on this.

> But at least it's now fairly straightforward to get accidentals from  
> arbitrary fonts -- with alternative tunings -- where it was  
> basically impossible before the pitch model was changed.

I wasn't aware of that the pitch model has changed. Is there a  
description available somewhere?

I am thinking a bit on how to typeset the order of accidentals of  
different type; inputs welcome. An example illustrating the general  
problem:

Suppose one has the Persian koron p = -3 and sori > = +2 syntonic  
commas in Pythagorean tuning, and another accidental + which raises  
2.5 commas. Then it is natural to write p+, from larger to smaller  
alteration.

But should one keep the Persian sori first and write >+, or would one  
prefer the larger to smaller order +> of these accidentals?

  Hans