Re: note-spacing: stretch somewhat uniformly; issue 3304 (issue 36830045)

[Trevor Bača]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 2:28 AM, Mike Solomon <address@hidden> wrote:

On Dec 16, 2013, at 10:24 AM, address@hidden wrote:

Reviewers: MikeSol,

Message:
On 2013/12/16 07:42:52, MikeSol wrote:

If you understand this stuff, could you put a comment in

lily/include/spring.hh

as to what inverse_compress_strength and inverse_stretch_strength are?

They are the stretchability and compressibility of the space.
Next time I have linux up I'll put a comment, or just change the names.

Ok - try to explain the relation between things (min distance, ideal distance, and these two constants).

You should try the patch on your music.  You probably have a lot of
staggered timing in the style of 3-against-2 hemiola, which should be
aligned more evenly with the patch.

I’d say Trevor Bača is an even better candidate (cc’d to this e-mail) - he has π on e hemiolas in his music.

Hi all,

Just now read through this thread. (Thanks for point me to it, Mike!)

I haven't followed the details of this change. But it is true that I have a large number of differently tupletted rhythms written against each other in most of my scores (though, alas, no ratios in terms of transcendental numbers ;) What I can say is that I've downloaded and run each of 2.17.95, 2.17.96 and 2.17.97 against all of my recent scores (and also against a sizable battery of related regression tests) and the horizontal spacing has been excellent in the output coming from all three release candidates.

I suppose it's important to note that all of my scores use proportional notation everywhere. So I imagine that most of the horizontal spacing improvements don't actually impact my scores. (The recent spacing changes optimize Lily's *default* spacing, correct?) In fact I've been amazed at how consistently correct horizontal spacing turns out from one version of LilyPond to the next when proportional notation is turned on.

[As an aside (but hopefully a helpful one), proportional notation was one of the first things that brought me to Lily years ago. Han-Wen and I built the specification for proportional notation together and he did the implementation (way back in 2005, IIRC). Since that time I've used proportional notation in every score I've written. (And I've since seen a number of other composers who favor more-or-less complicated rhythmic divisions in their own music doing the same.) And I'd like to report something quite wonderful: in *many* of the first rehearsals of performances of my music that I've been to, it's been the case that one or two of the musicians will take me aside during a break and say something like "this regular spacing thing that you're doing here: it helped me tremendously when I was trying to figure out how all these rhythms are working; is there any chance you could convince other composers to do the same thing." (!) So it was a (very gratifying) surprise to learn that players have been as much of a fan of the feature over the years as I have. And, actually, quite unexpected.]

So all of that is just to point out that I may very well not see the results of recent spacing optimizations for reasons of proportional spacing.

Trevor.

--
Trevor Bača
address@hidden