Microtone accidentals

[Maximilian Albert]

Hi everyone,

here is the last and biggest unfinished project that has been resting on
my hard drive for a while: Arrowed accidentals for microtone notation.

At present Lilypond already has good support for quarter- and other
microtones (see, e.g., section 6.1.4 of the manual or the NEWS file of
v2.11 where Turkish makam music is mentioned). But from earlier requests
on this list it seems that at least some composers frequently use
accidentals with up- and down-arrows to indicate microtones, which is
not yet natively supported by Lilypond (although I seem to remember
another thread proposing a postcript-based workaround).

Inspired by a request a while ago I started to implement these arrowed
accidentals as new glyphs in their own right. At that time I encountered
problems with the design of the arrowhead because it either turned out
too small or was poorly separated from the surrounding stafflines.

Attached is a sample [1] of redesigned glyphs where this problem is
hopefully solved. IMHO the size, blackness, and overall style of the 
arrowheads goes together well the accidentals, but I have the slight 
fear that the arrowheads might be a bit too small to be legible when 
printed. Unfortunately I don't own a high resolution printer myself, so 
I can only judge the design based on the visual appearance on the screen
(which seems to be fine).

Thus I would be extremely grateful if someone with a good printer could
comment on the design (of course, other comments from the experts and
interested users are very welcome, too). If there are no problems
related to legibility and the design is approved of by the main
developers, I'd be glad to send over a patch (I presume that there is
interest to include them in Lilypond?).

Otherwise please let me know how the glyphs can be improved (or at least
what is wrong with them). I don't know the exact timeline for v2.12, and
I will be able to invest only little time in the near future, I'm 
afraid, but if there is interest to include them and it turns out that 
not too many adaptions need to be made, it would be terrific if they 
made it into the new stable release.

Cheers,
Max


[1] In two versions: Both as a kind of "proof sheet" for on-screen
inspection (which features a really huge staffsize) and also with
"normal"-sized (= 20pt) staves for printing.

arrowed_accidentals_big.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

arrowed_accidentals.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document