Extended stems = *bad*. They look old fashioned and they make the music
harder to read. Nobody wants them. Everybody hates them, (including
Mozart, et al.. :-)) Get rid of them!
You should look at some piano score with 3 or 4 octave stems and the
*augmentation dots at the stem end*, neatly piled around the center
line, the way the geniuses who started that nonsense did them, to see
something really really really stupid looking.
I really like the way lilypond does beam slant (except when the stems
are extended). Great algorhythm :-) at work. In the length of stems,
however, there are peculiarities.
You should have some sort of limit on how short the stems can get, to
avoid the common engraver's mistake of snugging up a notehead to the
beams. How about a default minimum of 2.5 linespaces of stem extension
beyond beams?
I noticed that when I imported a lilypond.ps file into the gimp that the
edge of the stem does not quite align with the notehead edge. There is a
corner, which obviously should not be there. It is invisible to the
naked eye, but isn't this a possible source of collision problems?
It is customary to shorten the stems of very high and very low notes on
a single staff when they point away from center. I am amazed and puzzled
that lilypond does not do this. If the default stem length were
shortened gradually from the first leger line (3.5 linespaces) to the
fourth leger line (2.5 linespaces--an elegant minimum, allowing for
beams) it would not only improve the general appearance but often make
space for another line of music on a page. I don't know whether any
other software does this, but engravers used to. Not doing it is the
main deficiency of typeset music, IMHO. I think it would be a good
selling point, so to speak, and would it be so difficult to implement?
:-)
I wish that you were not wasting time on parsing chords, but it is
essential that a chord parser not care about spelling. It should name a
diminished seventh built on a B# as a Co without any backtalk.
Otherwise, it will not only be useless, which it will be anyway, but it
will not work.
--
Peace, understanding, health and happiness to all beings!
U U u ^^ ` 'U u U ''`'`
_-__o|oO|o-_|o_o_-_MN[-->mm@_-_--___o|o|oU_|o_o__lilypond
dave N Va USA David Raleigh Arnold [EMAIL PROTECTED]
