Re: [patch] first-clef property

[Juergen Reuter]

On Sat, 2 Feb 2008, Nicolas Sceaux wrote:

> ...
>
> I have worked today on a draft, simple incipit engraver, with clef,
> key signature and time signature. Might someone comment on it? I have
> no experience with that part of the code. If something can be made
> more eleguant, please speak :-)

Thanks a lot!  To me, your code looks fine, except for the condition

+  if (clef_)
+    clef_ = key_signature_ = time_signature_ = 0;

which probably should be something like:

+  if (clef_ || key_signature_ || time_signature_)
+    clef_ = key_signature_ = time_signature_ = 0;

Or maybe completely remove the condition.

However, I see a very important feature missing in this approach:
An incipit should (at least in my view) be thought of as the beginning of 
a piece written in notation that comes close to the autograph or first 
publishing.  That is, the incipit actually starts the music.  Then, at 
some point (e.g. after the clef or after the first note of each voice or 
after the first few notes), the music is reset to its start, the notation 
switches to modern style, and printing starts again, this time from the 
very beginning to the very end.

In particular, as Laura points out, many people want to include one or 
more notes in the incipit.  More generally, virtually any music expression 
could appear in an incipit -- it's just printed in an old-fashioned style 
or otherwise coming much closer to the original.

Thus, the ideal behavior of an incipt engraver would be to ordinary start 
printing the piece, using (for example) a mensural context and the info 
from IncipitClef, IncipitSignature, and IncipitTimeSignature.  Then, when 
the InciptEngraver has done its work, the music should rewind back to the 
very beginning, and ordinary type setting should start.

A couple of weeks ago, I think I already posted the idea of having a 
scheme function, say "\makeIncipit { <music> }", that takes all 
of the music as argument and creates from it another music expression with 
the incipit.  You could then say something like "\makeIncipt { <music> } 
<music>" to create the incipit, followed by the actual music.  However 
note, that currently it is not possible to implement such a scheme 
function for several technical details, such as the system start delimiter 
that would also have to be placed *after* the incipit.  Maybe with some 
more changes at your incipit engraver, this engraver can be used to 
actually implement the "\makeIncipit" scheme function.  This is what I 
thought of when I used the word "challenging". ;-)

Greetings,
Juergen