On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 3:39 AM, James Harkins <jamshar...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Something I've been wondering about for awhile... lilypond.org boasts
of "optical spacing" for notes with alternating up and down stems,
but it seems this feature has been lost somewhere (or disabled by
default). In this example, it's quite plain to my eyes that the stems
are not equally spaced within the bars.
\version "2.18.2"
\relative c'' { e4 c, f' d, g' e, a' f, }
Which is correct -- the website, or LP's behavior?
hjh
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James,
I would have to disagree with you. I think the notes look very nicely
spaced. I think you are misunderstanding what "optical spacing"
implies. It doesn't mean that the stems will be placed equidistant from
each other. That would look awful because of how far that would push
the noteheads out of place! Rather, it's a balancing act of how much
whitespace our eyes perceive due to how close the stems AND noteheads
appear to be when the stems are in opposite directions. An up-stem,
down-stem pair will tend to push each other farther away _a little_
because the eye wants more whitespace between them. A down-stem,
up-stem pair will tend to pull towards each other _a little_ because
the eye wants less whitespace between them.
Attached is a pictogram of the paper columns of your snippet. Notice
the difference in how far a down-stem notehead is from an up-stem
notehead (2.66 staff spaces) and vice-versa (3.30 staff spaces). They
are not equal because of the optical spacing engine. If they were equal
(at 2.98 staff spaces), the up-stem/down-stem pairs would look too
close together and the down-stem/up-stem pairs would look too far
apart, as exemplified in the LilyPond essay:
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.18/Documentation/essay/engraving-details#optical-spacing
In my opinion, I'd say the optical spacing is alive and kicking!
Hope that helps.
-Abraham
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