Re: Fingering orientations and use of <>

[David Kastrup]

Thomas Morley <address@hidden> writes:

> currently we have these two engravers:
> Fingering_engraver and New_fingering_engraver.
>
> The New_fingering_engraver has these properties:
> fingeringOrientations
> harmonicDots
> stringNumberOrientations
> strokeFingerOrientations
>
> If you want to use any of these properties you need the chord-construct.
>
> The Fingering_engraver applies more or less to fingerings without <>.
>
> That's the current more or less intended state and it's a mess.
>
> Well, I'm quite half-assed to divine the future, though, I hope we
> will change the current status somewhere down the road.

For a suitable value of "we"...  Redesigning this will definitely cause
quite a few incompatibilities, so it is not for the faint of heart.

The principal difference between the two engravers is that
New_fingering_engraver associates articulations with the music
expression they are attached to, while Fingering_engraver associates
articulations with music occuring at the same time.

Like with \tweak and \override, the former is more targeted and
reliable, while the second has the advantage that you can use parallel
music << { ... } { ... } >> to attach articulations to an existing
passage of music.  Of course, in the second case it is not possible to
attach to particular notes within a chord.

> Being a guitarist myself I write any single note, where it might be
> possible to assume a left or right positioning of the fingering, in
> <>, and I will not change this until the engravers-medley is somehow
> more cleared up.

Clearing up the structure of the engravers is not really simple given
the partly conflicting goals they manage to serve.  However, it might
make sense to let the Fingering_engraver heed more of the properties
that the New_fingering_engraver can interpret.

-- 
David Kastrup