Questions about guitar tablature support

[Stef Epardaud]

Hello,

First, congrats for all the new features in since 1.6, I am very
impressed and my scores look a lot better. Since I'm a good tester for
drums and guitar (I do all my music with lilypond) I have a few guitar
tab questions:

- Hammer/Tap/Pull-off support: in a guitar tab, you can do tapping,
  which is a technique consisting in not using your right hand to
  squeeze the string, but hit it at the wanted fret to produce a sound,
  or pull the string of of where it was pressed to let a lower pressed
  note sound. In guitar tablature this is usually done by having a H,T,P
  letter above the tablature number and having the notes slured. In the
  case of a Hammer, the note is slured from nothing. The way I do it now
  is with normal text on top of the note, but would be easier to have
  that as an articulation.
- Unfretted notes: these are produced when you mute the string(s) with
  your left hand without actually pressing them at any fret, and picking
  them with your right hand, it produces a percussion sound. The actual
  note head and tablature head should be a cross (x) while you can still
  specify an approximate note for it for the musical stave.
- Palm-mute: this is when you leave your hand laying slightly on the
  string while playing normally, it produces a mufled sound which is
  very commonly used. The notation is usually a "P.M." sign under the
  first note, and a dashed line going from this sign until the last note
  that is palm-muted, thus making it possible to have whole sections of
  palm-mute.
- glissandos to or from nowhere: in guitar tablature, you can have
  glissandos to no note, up and down. Right now in lilypond, if I want a
  glissando, I have to put a note to gliss to, or from, but in typical
  guitar tablature you are not bound to gliss exactly to or from an
  exact note, it is usually implied that the glissando should be done to
  or from the farthest place possible on the fretboard.
- Harmonics: you can play a harmonic on a string by touching the string
  but not pressing it down the fret, at a specified position and then
  sqeazing it with your right hand. Typical notation is to specify
  normally where the string is touched by a number, and having the text
  "harm." on top of it, while the note from the partition stave has a
  square head. You can also have artificial harmonics of two sorts, the
  first is when you need to press a tab with your left hand while
  tapping the wanted harmonic with your right hand. In this case the
  notation is to write the pressed tab normally, while having the
  harmonic tab between parethesis. The second kind is more complex and
  I haven't checked all my notations for consensus.

Is there any plans to implement such things ?
If yes, I will make all the research needed about exactly how it should
look and all the special cases, and will provide all the info I can
gather.
Thanks.
-- 
Stéphane Epardaud