Re: LyricText #'font-series = #'bold-narrow ?!

[Ralph Palmer]

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 9:27 AM, Valentin Villenave
<address@hidden>wrote:

> Hi Alexander,
>
> CC-ing to the bug list just in case.
>
> On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 2:39 PM, Alexander Kobel <address@hidden> wrote:
> > why does LyricText #'font-series default to #'bold-narrow?
> >
> > First, it's counterintuitive to me to have a bold narrow font as the most
> > important thing to read in a piece; it's just too black-ish. Condensed
> seems
> > fine for lyrics, but bold?
> > Second, it's defined for nearly no font, in particular Century Schoolbook
> L
> > (the default of LilyPond) does not have it, IIUC, so regular is used
> > instead.  At least, this holds for the free typeface; according to
> > Wikipedia, there are Century designs featuring a narrow variant, but
> AFAICS
> > all are commercial, and don't necessarily come as Century /Schoolbooks/.
> > Third, even /if/ it were defined, it doesn't seem to work: I tried
> "Nimbus
> > Sans L", the only font I could find right now which actually offers a
> bold
> > condensed variant (with the same basename, i.e. [1]), and it falls back
> to
> > regular even there.  Which came to no surprise after I saw
> >
> > # git grep bold-narrow
> > Documentation/misc/ChangeLog-2.1: * scm/font.scm (paper20-font-vector):
> add
> > bold-narrow series (only
> > Documentation/misc/ChangeLog-2.1: * scm/define-grobs.scm
> > (all-grob-descriptions): use bold-narrow
> > scm/define-grob-properties.scm:   include @code{medium}, @code{bold},
> > @code{bold-narrow}, etc.")
> > scm/define-grobs.scm:             (font-series . bold-narrow)
> >
> > Is this symbol actually defined somewhere, and what am I missing?
> >
> >
> > [1] This observation makes me wonder: is it possible to define different
> > font basenames for several series of, say, the serif default font?  Some
> of
> > my favourite fonts come in two flavours for normal spacing and condensed
> > spacing, and my workaround - if I need both - is to define the condensed
> one
> > as the monospace font to have easy access on it.  Which works, but is a
> > complete abuse of the monospace entry.  The Real Thing would be to say
> > "GarmdITC Bk BT" is my default serif font, with default proportions,
> > "GarmdITC BkCn BT" is the corresponding condensed font. Some typefaces
> even
> > need the same for bold, ultra-bold or something like this (e.g. Arial vs.
> > Arial Black).  And when 'font-series is switched, of course the
> appropriate
> > basename should be chosen.
>
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Greetings -

I'm directing this primarily to bug-list folks. This was submitted over a
week ago, and I see no action. Did I miss something? I don't understand
fonts or typefaces or their parameters well, so I don't understand whether
there is a bug or not. Perhaps this should be a feature request. I'm willing
to add it to the tracker if someone can confirm that it is a bug or else
determine that it should be a feature request. In either case, I'd like
something more succinct.

I appreciate your time and attention,

Ralph