Re: Merging different fonts

[Douglas A Linhardt]

On 3/13/2004 6:00 PM, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:

> Patch looks OK in principle, but I have some further questions and comments.
> 

Thanks.  Any comments are appreciated.

> * Can you think of any case where merge-differently-fonted is
> necessary? If not, then we can skip that option, and simply never
> merge if styles are different.

I considered that, but I saw the pattern for different heads and different
dottings.  Not having much choral experience (where I suspect this comes into
play), I don't see a lot of reason for those properties, either, but lilypond
provides them.  So I figured I'd also provide a mechanism for the existing
behavior as part of my fix.  I was just trying to leave as much flexibility in
the system as possible.

I got started playing with this because of handbell music.  In handbell music,
handbells and optional handchimes are usually denoted on the same staff with
different note heads.  Generally, colliding notes would not be merged (AFAIK),
but some composers/arranges might want to merge them on occasion.

> * Secondly, why define Note_head::get_font_name ()?  Doesn't it work
> if you do
> 
>    gh_equal_p (up_note->get_property ("style"),
>              down_note->get_property ("style"))
> 
> ?
>

It probably does.  I was just learning about the use of properties, and I was
looking for examples to start from.  I started from the merge-differently-headed
function and traced back.  Somewhere I ran into 2 functions that used the same
code for accessing the font name, I figured this would be a good place for a new
function, and used it for my patch, too.

I have been playing around the last couple of weeks with the autochange function
(also for use with handbells - expect a patch in a couple of days), and I've
been learning quite a bit about object and context properties.  I now would use
the property directly, but I didn't realize how it all fit together when I wrote
this patch.


> * Final formatting nitty gritty nitpick: we want spaces before opening
>   parentheses, ie.
> 
>     function_call ()
> 
>   instead of
> 
>     function_call()
> 
> 

Sorry.  That's my preference showing through.  At work, we omit the space, so
I'm used to it and I prefer it.  I'll be more careful in future patches that I
send you.

Doug