[Feature request] Scalability

[Erik Sandberg]

[I'm having some trouble sending mail. I hope this gets through.]

Hi,

Here's a feature request for the future:
I know from some earlier discussions that it is _possible_ to create other 
sizes than the standard 11,13,16,20,23,26 ones, by using weird papersizes and 
psresize. If I understood it correctly, it is in theory possible to create 
just about any size as ps output, by fiddling with numbers, defining new 
kinds of paper and recalculate margins and stuff. To me this feels like a 
pain, that should be avoidable...

How hard/tedious/dirty would it be to add a feature that makes _any_ 
real-valued font size possible, given that .ps output is used?

I.e., the interface would be a simple one-command thing like "\musicsize 11.4" 
or something, instead of the current "\include paper11.ly". I must admit that 
I don't know much about Lilypond's internal structures, but it somehow feels 
that it could be settable inside e.g. a \paper block.

I guess this would need some dirty hacking/restructuring, since some global 
properties need to be remembered until the dvi->ps conversion, and also I 
guess the generated .dvi files would be broken whenever this new command 
would be used. But it would nevertheless be a great feature. It's one of the 
few features that Lilypond lacks, and that there is plenty of commercial 
notation software that doesn't lack. Too often it happens for me that e.g. 
paper20 generates too many pages, while paper16 gets a bit too small.

Also, it would make it possible to use grace notes in paper11. Which people 
frequently complain about on the lilypond-user list.

Any comments? Would it be doable?
thanks,
erik