Re: Does the center of the staff need to be zero?

[Juergen Reuter]

Hi, all!

Just a few comments:

Actually, binding the origin to a staff line (e.g. the most lower staff 
line) rather than to the center of the origin (as we currently do) would 
solve the current problem that you have to design clefs explicitly either 
for staves with an even number of staff lines or for staves with an odd 
number of staff lines.  In this sense, I would really welcome such a 
change (even though some of the ancient clefs would then have to be 
shifted by 1/2 staff line in the metafont code)!

If you do not understand what I mean, then just try to apply the ordinary 
G clef to a score with 4 staff lines or 6 staff lines instead of the 
ordinary 5 staff lines.  You will see that the clef will always be off 1/2 
staff line (unless you do some y-offset trickery with backend properties).

However, the drum clef will suffer from such a change, since the drum clef 
is usually always centered on the staff, regardles of the number of staff 
lines.  I think, the drum clef is the only clef for which this problem 
will arise.  Also, I am not sure if there are some serious implications 
of such a change for the pitch squash engraver.

Greetings,
Juergen

On Sat, 17 Mar 2007, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:

> As far as I can see there is no strict need, fot it to be zero, so if
> you have a sensible patch to change it, go ahead and post it.
>
>
> BTW I know that you have an interesting patch for Lily to make line
> configurations more flexible. I'll try to review it this week.
>
> regards,
>
> Han-Wen
>
>
> 2007/3/15, Kevin Dalley <address@hidden>:
> > In LilyPond, using line-positions, the center is required to be at 0,
> > otherwise there are problems with the created score.  There are a
> > couple of possibilities.
> >
> > One is to make the documentations more clear that staffs must be
> > centered at 0.
> >
> > The other possibility is to modify LilyPond to take staffs which are
> > not centered at 0.
> >
> > I notice 2 areas which need to be modified.  I have a small patch for
> > bar-line.cc, which otherwise draws the bar line of the correct size,
> > but centered around 0 rather than centered around the real center.
> >
> > Ledger lines need some work as well, though there are problems even if
> > the staff is centered, particularly if the top and bottom lines are on
> > even positions.
> >
> > Should I post my patch for bar lines for staffs which are not centered
> > at 0?