RE: Me and Braille music again

[Ralph Little]

Hi Han-Wen,
Reponses below:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Han-Wen Nienhuys [mailto:address@hidden 
> Sent: 24 February 2004 11:12
> 
> 
> > So, I'm pretty well done doing a Braille font for Lily, that's no
> > problem.
> 
> Huh? I thought braille is are just a grid of six dots. Why would you
> do them as a font? Isn't it easier to do a markup, eg.
> 
>   \markup  { \braile #"..o.o.o" }
> 
> which takes the pattern of . and o and puts  the dots in the 
> right place?
> 

That's a cool idea. 

However, some Braille users seem to be a bit fussy about how their
Braille looks.
I know, I know, most of them are blind, but some commentators seem to
like fancy diamonds 
for the points rather than plain dots so I thought that users of the
facility might 
want to mess with the style a bit. It's not big deal to do in a font.
After all, you only do it once in a function
And replicate calls to it. :) Also, some like to to see tiny markers in
the spaces where the dots would be in some cases.
I plan to code a slight variant of the font to cope with this.

I plan to implement a scheme lookup-table so that if somebody wanted so
use one of the 
other Braille fonts that are available they could use this to adjust the
character assignments 
if it didn't match mine, although there is a standard.


> > However it contains
> > lots of "ugh"s and some comment about creating space from 
> thin air, so I
> > wonder if that is dodgy territory.
> 
> Are you looking at the same file as I, which one?  (Please use 2.1 for
> new development.)
> 
Sorry, my fault, I was looking at 2.0.1!
I have 2.0.1 and 2.1.19 on my machine.

> > Since everything is spaced and positioned ultimately by 
> chaining grobs
> > off the top, bottom and side of others, I'm not sure how to 
> position a
> > grob above *everything* else for the current Staff.
> 
> Do it like you do chordnames: make a
> 
>   \context BrailleStaff { .. }
> 
> which has a Braille_note_engraver , and then
> 
> 
>   <<
>    \context BrailleStaff \myMusic
>    \context Staff \myMusic
>   >>
> 

That sounds like a much better idea for getting over the spacing issue.
For the case where users JUST want Braille output, I was going to do a
little context as you suggest,
with just the engraver in it.

Is there any way that I can guard against horrible kludgy output if
somebody tries to
include the engraver in that \Staff context rather than the above
approach?
I suppose I could attach it to the top of the Staff itself, if one was
found.
If it collides with other items, users could use padding to lift it up
and away.
I'm just thinking of covering all the angles.

There is also the issue of output to embossers, but I'm going to forget
about that for the moment.

Thanks for that,
Ralph





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