Re: Proposed chord name font (PDF included)

[Carl Sorensen]

PabloZum <pabzum <at> terra.com.br> writes:

> 
> 
> This is a proposed Arial-based font that could be included in future 
> versions of LilyPond. 
> 
I'm not sure why the new font is important.  What are the new symbols that are
provided in the font that aren't in the Lilypond default font?

 
> Actually, it's more a range of possibilities than a new font. Placing chord 
> extensions like b9 and #11 one above the other is not a new idea, and may be 
> easily achieved by LilyPond wizards. 

You could easily become a LilyPond wizard to do this work.  The chords exist as
markups, and the markup functionality of Lilypond will support this kind of
work.  However, since you're the one who wants it, you need to either write it
yourself or sponsor somebody else to do it.  When I wanted fret diagrams, I had
to figure out how to get it started.

>  
> For instance, the chord that appears as a C7 plus a small flat 9th above a 
> small sharp 11th might conceivable be rendered in LilyPond notepad code as 
> c:7[b9/#11]; similarly, a C9 plus a small sharp 11th above a 13th might be 
> rendered as c:9[#11/13]. AND this might be done with virtually ANY 
> font

There are three different kinds of chord information in Lilypond.  The first is
the notes to be included in the chord.  so c:7 means "take a c chord (i.e.
pitches c e g) and add a 7th.  I don't think a proposal to change the "notes
included" information is the best way to handle this.  As I understand it, 
your proposal above would change the "notes included" information by adding
square brackets and slashes. 

A way to approach this that is more consistent with the LilyPond way of doing
things is to define a new chord name style.  The chord name is the second type
of chord information in Lilypond.  The chord naming routines take a set of
pitches generated by the chord parser, and turn it into a markup chord name. 
There are already at least two different chord name styles.  If you want to get
the special renderings shown in your PDF, you would add a new chord name
style(and you could name it anything you want, like "stacked-modifiers", or
"modern-jazz".  Then, by adding the code to chord-names.scm, you could create
the markups necessary to get the stacked markups.

However, you need to know that, as I said above, you will need to either write
your own code, get somebody who wants the same functionality to write the code,
or sponsor somebody to write the code.

The third type of chord information in Lilypond is the FretBoard information. 
FretBoards takes the pitches from the chord parser, and turns it into a fret
diagram.  I would prefer to have a different FretBoards functionality than we
currently have, but I have yet to write the code, or to come up with the money
to sponsor the changes I want.

It's nice of you to make a specific proposal for the output you'd like to see. 
Now you just need to figure out how to get that proposal implemented in 
Lilypond.

I hope this helps you understand how Lilypond development works.

Carl Sorensen