Howdy! I spent the last 2 afternoons in the Toronto Reference Library going through Henle and Bärenreiter scores from the 1970's and 80's. Mostly Goldberg, other Bach stuff and some Beethoven. I specifically looked at ties and came to the following conclusions...
i) There is huge variability and general lack of consistency not only in between the Henle and Bärenreiter, but even within the same editions. All of the "errors" and "inconsistencies" noted in this thread that appear in LilyPond also appear in both the Henle and Bärenreiter ii) The shape of the ties is noticeably thinner at the ends and broader in the middle, more so than the LilyPond tie. iii) ties are generally terminated over/under the middle of the notehead I can only conclude that historically there was much less attention to the minute details of tie consistency etc, and much of the detailing was left to the discretion of the engraver. Also since it was done manually, the minute variations that result actually work to "hide" the inconsistencies that otherwise would be more noticeable and produces a much more pleasing affect to the eye.. unlike the repetative algorithmic application of similar "errors" or "inconsistencies" that we might attribute to LilyPond. I don't think that attempting to emulate historical practice of manual engraving wrt. ties, is either possible or desireable. What we need is a modern standard that makes sense in the age of computer engraving. Here is my general sense of LilyPond ties and how they seem to be drawn and behave.... i) ties drawn between notes on the outside most staff space terminate on the outside staff line ii) ties drawn between notes on ledger lines terminate over/under the middle of the notehead iii) ties drawn between notes on spaces above ledger lines terminate to the side of the notehead iv) as space becomes more constrained, ties on the inner staff are diminished (shortened and less arch) in order to not cross over a staff line, at the expense of a more appropriate orientation to the notehead. v) ties drawn between notes on internal staff spaces, sometimes have more gap / space between the notehead making them inconsistent with other similar I think that i) above, should change so that the tie terminates outside the staff. I am ok with ii) and iii); this seems to make sense to me now as it somehow allocates the space around the note / tie / ledger line in a good way. Also I think that ties in the inner staff should cross over staff lines in order to maintain a more consistent orientation to the notehead. In conclusion, I think that perhaps 80% of ties in LilyPond are fine, fixing i) would make that substantially greater, as would a fix for iv) What makes a tie "good" or "bad" is often the result of personal preference. I don't think that rewriting the entire Tie code is the solution, and that it is probably best to make some relatively minor (?) changes to "fix" what is a consensus of the problematic ties, perhaps i) iv) and v) ? Thoughts? -steve _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user