Re: Petrucci-like spacing?

[Michael Lauer]

Laura Conrad <lconrad <at> laymusic.org> writes:

> 
> But when I transcribe Petrucci from the facsimile, the spacing lilypond
> does always looks clunky, especially in the parts with large
> note-values.
> 

> 
> I believe Petrucci's spacing is just equal spacing for every note, no
> matter what its value.  
> 
> Does anyone have any tricks for making lily's output look a little more
> like that?

Hi Laura,

I was able to get closer to what I think you want by:

-- setting SpacingSpanner #'shortest-duration-space to 1. That seems to
     turn off much of the duration-based spacing.
-- spacing notes and rests with extra-spacing-width and extra-spacing-height
     (the height to keep things from overlapping if they're on different
     lines).
-- setting defaultBarType to "", not Empty (I have no idea why, but it seems
     to help).
-- making barlines take no space, again with extra-spacing-width
-- removing the RehearsalMark stuff you have, which seems to add some
      space to the (invisible) barlines. To add it back when you have
      marks, maybe you could use \once \override for each one?
      
So the layout block looks like this:

    \layout {
       \context{
         \Staff
            \consists Custos_engraver
            \override Custos #'style = #'mensural
            
            \override BarLine #'extra-spacing-width = #'(+inf.0 . -inf.0)
         }
            
         \context {
              \Score
              defaultBarType = ""
              \override SpacingSpanner
                        #'base-shortest-duration = #(ly:make-moment 1 1)
              \override SpacingSpanner
                        #'shortest-duration-space = #1
        }
        \context {
            \Voice 
            \consists Ambitus_engraver
            \override NoteHead #'extra-spacing-width  = #'(-.4 . .4)
            \override Rest #'extra-spacing-width  = #'(-.4 . .4)
            \override NoteHead #'extra-spacing-height  = #'(-inf.0 . +inf.0)
            \override Rest #'extra-spacing-height  = #'(-inf.0 . +inf.0)
        }
    }
    
That ignores lyrics issues completely, but it's a start--

Hope that's useful--
Michael Lauer

> 
> I'm trying to redesign my website, and one idea I have is to have a
> graphic in the header with a facsimile on one side and lily's output on
> the other.   So it's important that people not look at the lilypond
> output and say, "Wow, that's ugly compared to the facsimile."  Of course
> one way to do that would be to use an ugly facsimile (of which there are
> many), but it would be more fun to use a beautiful facsimile and also
> have beautiful lilypond.
> 

I like that idea.