Re: [Denemo-devel] Need some direction/clarification

[Richard Shann]

On Wed, 2013-02-13 at 06:14 +0100, Onyeibo Oku wrote:
> Good morning
> 
> First off, Denemo is wonderful and unique.  I like it.
> I have tried MuseScore.
I would very much like to know how MuseScore compares - I couldn't get
it to do very much when I tried, but they have promotional videos.

>   My knowledge of Lilypond typeset syntax is
> rusty.  Last I used it was 3-4yrs ago.  Presently, I'm doing a small
> remix of a hymn in SATB.  So far, I've hit some walls
> 
> 1. I find that Denemo 1.0.0~rc9 doesn't exit nicely.  The Print and
> Document View windows always pop up again after Denemo's main window has
> closed.  This is weird.  I then have to kill the process or wait for
> Gnome to request a "Force close"
Yes, that *is* weird. It may help to know that, by default, Denemo runs
a thumb-nailer on exit - that is, it runs a copy of itself to create a
thumbnail, this copy being run with a non-interactive flag set, so you
should not see any window popping up for it. To see better what is going
on run Denemo from the command line and report on messages you see there
on exit. There is another exit problem, to do with the audio, but this
only happens on windows, you get a prompt asking you to type Enter at
the command line when that happens; this last problem is understood and
won't be in a release.

> 
> 2. The playback doesn't refocus to the current measure when the screen
> is scrolled out of view.  This is confusing.  The playback should always
> automatically scroll-back (or forward) the view to show the current
> location of the playback cursor.  Perhaps an option for disabling this
> behaviour may suit others who may prefer a static screen during playback
Playback will work best in page view. To get page view press Esc twice,
then adjust window size and the red bar at the bottom, dragging it up to
show at least two systems. Having said that, playback is quite
primitive. Consider whether you really need a moving cursor - you can
look at the final print view while it plays. Alternatively, there is a
new project ly2video (but it may be too early to use that for your
project).
> 
> 3. Why are the repeat barlines not affecting the playback?  It doesn't
> play the repeats
Because so far it was only implemented to check that the music is
correct, not for "listening pleasure", it is a rather mechanical output
ignoring grace notes, staccato, etc. I think LilyPond may generate
better MIDI if that is important. I say all this because I am concious
that no-one is working on improving MIDI from Denemo just now.
> 
> 4. On merging the four voices,
I am not sure what you mean by "merging the four voices". Some years ago
you had to join the voices in the Denemo display in order that they
print on a single staff. You do not need to do that now.

>  I find that the SA-stave is smaller than
> the TB-stave
I see you have a staff size set on those staffs - not sure how (possibly
you ran one of those "Print Accompanist's Score" commands, which would
not work for polyphony and might leave something bad like that). I have
deleted these (by right-clicking on the Staff Size menu item that pops
up when you move the cursor over the tools-icon at the very beggining of
the staff, and choosing delete. It also works to re-issue the command
with 0 for the default staff size).

>  and the stemming is crazy. 
You have to set the stemming for voices, alt-1,2,3,4 as the usual
shortcuts. I have set these at the start of the staff, but you may wish
to reverse 3 and 4 as voice three is (often) above voice four.

>  How does one approach this?
> What about curves, slurs, titles ...  How do I address those?
slurs are in Note/Rests menu, I use 7,8,9 to start extend and reduce a
slur from the keyboard, or Control-<n> to enter a duration slurring from
the previous note when entering rhythms.
Titles are in Score and Movement menus, two sorts, Book Titles (title
page, table of contents, critical notes at the end ...) or Simple
Titles, don't mix them.


>   See
> attached except of the denemo file in question for your perusal.
Attached is an edited version.
> 
> 5. The software doesn't use the same fonts as the Desktop ... I compiled
> with GTK3 and its running on Fedora-18 (gnome3).  This makes the
> software look a bit like QT-based UI.
Yes, it uses its own font that includes music notes so that sentences
with music notes in them can be written.

> 
> I anticipate your response.  Once again, .... its an awesome project.  I
> love the way the green-marker/cursor grows and shrinks to inform its
> location during scrolling. 
Thank you for the feedback - you are the first person to have remarked
on this (it is something I am proud of). If you build from the latest
git you will get another improvement to the cursor, at least I hope you
will find it an improvement.

Richard

rejoice-the-Lord-is-king-denemo-test.denemo
Description: application/xml