Re: Google Summer of Code 2015

[David Kastrup]

Georgy Frolov <address@hidden> writes:

> Hello,
>
> I too would like to do a lilypond-related GSoC project. I'm doing the
> final year of my MSc degree in mathematical physics, sing in a choir
> and occasionally use lilypond to typeset some choral scores; not yet
> familiar with its internals though.
>
> I've been working much with numerical codes in C++ and python,
> including much interpolation, optimization and tweaking heuristic
> models, so the tie/slur appearance project seems a great fit for me.
> It's also something where I  want improvement as a user of lilypond.
>
> Could you comment why it may not be suited for GSoC?

Personally, I think it is a reasonably well-contained piece of LilyPond
to work on.  I think it would be good if you had a copy of "Behind Bars"
at your hand and hopefully a reasonable bout of piano music from
renowned publishers in some hand-engraved editions: piano extracts for
choir tend to be newer, not with large challenges to slur appearance,
and not with a particular focus on piano note quality.

Of course, LilyPond manages to have ties/slurs look ugly even in
comparatively simple cases.

Starting point would be ties, I think: limited task that _really_ should
be computer-soluble.  And the code already gets all the data it needs
for making its decisions, so you can focus on doing the work rather than
fighting the data flow (the data flow in LilyPond is _way_ complex).

The disadvantage is that it's a bit of a hit&miss project where I don't
see a lot of leeway for "gradual" improvement.  So at the end of the
project, you'll either have something to show.  Or not.

If you want to have a good impression of what kind of code you would be
working with, the main work is likely currently done in
lily/tie-formatting-problem.cc.  Unifying the tie formatting and slur
formatting would be nice in theory but far beyond a GSoC project.

-- 
David Kastrup