Re: GSoC 2018 Interest and Information Request

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi Ed,

Thanks for contacting us! I am the Community Mentor for the "Stylesheets" GSoC 
project, so I'm probably the best person to tackle your query at this point.

> To introduce myself, my name is Edward Harbison.  I am about two-thirds 
> through my third year of undergraduate studies at Moravian College in 
> Bethlehem, PA, USA, where I am a dual-major in chemistry and computer science 
> with minors in mathematics and music theory.  This past summer, I 
> participated in a research project on campus involving LilyPond (which will 
> be public soon).  I have knowledge of Python, Java, C, C++, Scheme, and 
> MusicXML.  I've also been using LilyPond as my primary scorewriter for a few 
> years now, and I have been venturing through its source code as well.

What a great background for this project!

[FYI, Here's mine: I did one year of the Pure Math program with a minor in 
Computer Science (University of Waterloo), then switched over to music and got 
a Bachelor of Music with a Concentration in Piano Performance (University of 
British Columbia) and Master of Music in Composition (Rice University). I have 
knowledge of Java and XML/XSLT (including MusicXML), but no real -fu in any of 
the other languages needed here. I've been using Lilypond since 2002, and would 
consider myself a power user.]

> Looking at the projects listed on LilyPond’s website, the project I am most 
> interested in is “Support for Style Sheets”.  I’ve been trying to make this 
> functionality for myself anyways, so I’d love to be able to partake in the 
> project.  Is there any way I can get some more information on the project?  
> The GSoC page on the LilyPond website is helpful, but of course, I’d love to 
> learn more about it.

Stated simply, our goal is to design and implement a mechanism by which a user 
can load one or more "stylesheets" to control the "look & feel" of the final 
compiled score (and, to a lesser degree, determine the functionality available 
to them in the code).

As one concrete example, it would be great to type something like

    \useStylesheet "Henle solo piano 1952"

and have the resulting score look "just like" the (e.g.) Beethoven Sonata 
series published by Henle in the mid-20th Century. This stylesheet — either by 
itself or (more likely) in concert with a number of hierarchically-arranged 
stylesheets — would load the correct notation fonts, define titling fields and 
formats, set page geometry, etc.

The project will require the answering of a number of technical and design 
questions (e.g., What's the optimal granularity of the stylesheet hierarchy? 
What's the user interface for loading them? How will Lilypond determine if a 
stylesheet is loaded / has already been loaded / is not available? What's the 
graceful degradation plan? etc.).

I have a large number of stylesheets, and a fairly broad experience tinkering 
with them (see my Henle example online, my "Sound of Music" sample page, etc.), 
and so I believe I am well-positioned to help someone with real 
technical/programming skills achieve a great GSoC result. If you have more 
specific questions, let me know (cc'ing the list, of course).

Hope this helps!
Kieren.
________________________________

Kieren MacMillan, composer
‣ website: www.kierenmacmillan.info
‣ email: address@hidden