Re: ET microtonal notation

[Hans Åberg]

> On 23 Feb 2016, at 23:15, Simon Albrecht <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>>>> The first file is mentioned here [2]. The others come from [3-4], also 
>>>> mentioned in that discussion.
>>>> 
>>>> 1. http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2016-02/msg00569.html
>>>> 2. http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2016-02/msg00627.html
>>>> 3. http://www.openlilylib.org/
>>>> 4. http://www.smufl.org/
>>> Still, it’s up to anyone to guess this. And ‘regular.ly’ or 
>>> ‘definitions.ily’ (really!) are quite commonplace filenames. I don’t know 
>>> how many dozen files called ‘definitions.ily’ might be in OpenLilyLib.
>> I’ll send you them in private mail
> 
> There’s no point in that. Personally, I have no interest in Arabic music.

The file regular.ly does the retuning for any ET. The other two admits using 
SMuFL glyphs, with microtonal accents a special case. The SMuLF site has other 
examples, not particularly related to microtonality.

Then what I sent you also had a microtonal example: Helmholtz-Ellis notation in 
E53, illustrated by maqam key signatures.

The traditional Arabic notation use other microtonal accidentals, and LilyPond 
has those. But they are incomplete if one is transposing: there will be gaps.

In past LilyPond versions, microtonal key signatures did not work properly, but 
they seem OK now. So it is important to test those.

>>> So I’m sorry, but speaking of a ‘rant’ is somewhat of an overstatement.
>>> In the ly-user post of mine that you quoted I spoke of a ‘concise’ request. 
>>> Perhaps you try and make one.
>> Just have the files and font included in the LilyPond distribution, as they 
>> seem to work.
> 
> ‘They seem to work’ is not a criterion for inclusion in LilyPond.

That is why I used that formulation.

> The question is if they meet standards of both notation and coding _and_ are 
> of sufficiently general interest. And most importantly they will only be 
> included in LilyPond if someone does the coding and documentation and uploads 
> a patch, following the standard procedures. If no developer is interested in 
> doing so, then it will not happen – that’s how LilyPond development works.

Indeed.

If regular.ly is included, then that works with Turkish and Arabic music, but 
for say Persian music or other microtonal notation, LilyPond does not have the 
required glyphs, so SMuLF is necessary. If Unicode integrates SMuLf, that would 
the way for LilyPond to go.