Re: stylesheets, defaults, and other in-Pond-erables

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi David,

> Still not quite understanding the request...

Sorry — I'm probably being unclear.

When I look at the "Henle Beethoven" example I've [extremely quickly] put 
together, I think it's more pleasing to the eye than the default Lilypond 
output. I think the default output from Lilypond should look more like the 
Henle version — or some "superior" (Bärenreiter?) benchmark on which the 
Lilypond community comes to some reasonable consensus — than the current 
default.

After all, the claim is that Lilypond "brings the aesthetics of traditionally 
engraved music to computer printouts". But it obviously stops a little short of 
that goal — and it doesn't seem THAT far away (cf. my Henle Beethoven example) 
to take it over the goal line, for the majority of users.

> The bits of Boulez's third piano sonata published by Universal are
> certainly an engraver's tour de force; long passages of grace notes with
> a new dynamic mark for each individual note, acrobatically-drawn slurs
> snaking across staves, two types of pedal at once, multiple layers of
> markup (both text and symbol), vertically-typeset names for snippets of
> music, tiny crescendo marks drawn at angles between individual notes,
> finicky pedal markings

I'm quite happy to look at this "fringe case" once the default output of "more 
traditional music" is much closer to the ideal.

> Or email you a page or two scanned, if that's acceptable practice.

I'm quite sure that's fine in this situation.
3-4 pages (including some of the more "fringe-y" parts) would be great.

> If instead the request is more like "What's the over-all look of the
> canonical example of a plain piano solo score", I think you're unlikely
> to go wrong with Henle's print of the Beethoven sonatas done in the 1950s.

Glad to know I hit so close to the mark on my first try!  ;)

> I think a big part of "getting piano music right" in Lilypond is ability
> to know when to use chords, when to use separate voices, and when to use
> polyphony

Agreed. That's a user-training issue.

> and having convenient and logical means for switching midstream.

That's a Lilypond development issue (separate from my stylesheet project).

> I'm sure that some of my favourable impressions of some of the
> nicest-looking scores come from generally-non-varying items such as
> notehead shape

I won't be changing that in the "default" stylesheet(s).

> markup font

Once the basic stylesheets are set up using the fonts included in the standard 
distro (e.g., New Century Schoolbook), we can extend them (with font changes, 
etc.) to match more specific "house styles".

> proportion of notehead size to staff size

We could consider changing the defaults here… but I suspect we'll stay with the 
current Lilypond defaults.

> proportion of staff size to paper size

That (and other parameters of that ilk) is the sweet spot of what I'm looking 
at:

    staff size(s)
    spacing parameters, horizontal
    spacing parameters, vertical
    grob parameters (padding, shape, font-size, etc.)

If you comment out the \include line in my Beethoven example, my choices as a 
Lily-coder (e.g., when to use chords, when to use separate voices, etc.) are 
obvious; but the margins are (IMO) poorly-proportioned, the spacing is a little 
odd, the titles are ugly, etc. Using the stylesheet, it suddenly starts to look 
like hand-engraved music in which someone with a keen eye for proportions 
planned the page with care.

I want the default output of Lilypond to always look like hand-engraved music 
in which someone with a keen eye for proportions planned the page with care.

Thanks,
Kieren.