Re: Feedback on lilypondblog article

[Noeck]

Hi Urs and Abraham,

thanks for your replies. I already assumed that this is mostly not new
to you, but I didn't know which parts of it.

>> 1. set-global-staff-size ...

ok


>> 2. ... different stylesheets … for a simple font/style change … and one for 
>> the complete “Henle impression”?
> 
> That's the idea. … but I definitely didn't expect anyone to look so closely 
> so early

Ok, fair enough. As you are aware and see it the same way, I am happy :)


>> 3. If I have a font in my LP installation … I can not use it
>> automatically with the library – I have to add a file in the stylesheets
> 
> Are you talking of fonts that are available from fonts.openlilylib.org?

No (see below), about a custom font.

> If yes, this is either a bug or (hopefully) you don't have the latest version 
> of openLilyLib checked out. All fonts from the official repository should 
> have a default (even if empty) stylesheet present.

Yes, that's true, that works as all stylesheets are present.

> Apart from that there _is_ a fallback solution: You can write
> \useNotationFont \with {
>   style = none
> } Beethoven
> 
> to skip the inclusion of the default stylesheet.
> This is described in more detail in the (pending) second post.

That's ok, but I would argue that this is too complicated if
\useNotationFont MyFont
could also work out-of-the box.

> If there is a real chance that one day people use alternative fonts that are 
> _not_ part of fonts.openlilylib.org we should of course add a default 
> fallback solution.

Yes there is! Abraham was so kind to produce me a variant of Emmentaler
with a more Cadence-like clef. But also in general I think it should
work for any font present in the lilypond folder.


>> 4. The same, if there is no -brace font, the emmentaler brace font could
>> be assumed without having to copy the emmentaler brace font to
>> fontname-brace.otf.
> 
> Hm, this again makes me think you're not using the latest openLilyLib.

Yes. I missed the “Fix no-brace-available bug” commit.


>> 5. Some thoughts/discussion might be needed for text font handling:
>> Currently, the lilyJAZZText/Chord font is not used automatically even
>> thouth it belongs to the jazz style. On the other hand, the Beethoven
>> stylesheet also changes the text font to match the Henle style for
>> instance. This comes back to the question (2): Is \useNotationFont
>> selecting a font (including line thickness) or is it selecting a whole
>> style to match Henle or Peters Edition or what ever style. I would
>> suggest to separate these two aims.
> 
> That's correct.
> ad 2) as admitted this is not properly cleaned up yet.
> The handling of text fonts hasn't been implemented at all yet, and yes, it 
> should be discussed.
> I think that the appropriate text fonts should be loaded automatically, but 
> only as an option.
> 
> But I suggest to wait with this discussion until the second post is published 
> because this discusses the "advanced" interface to font handling, and the 
> text handling should be considered in that context.
> Maybe you could put your thoughts into an issue in the meantime?

Ok.

>> 6. The font install script could accept several destination paths to
>> install fonts in a list of lilypond directories (like
>> lilypond-2*/lilypond). That's something I could do, should I?
> 
> Yes, this is already on my wishlist.
> But I'm not sure if I understand you correctly: you can already pass a list 
> of directories to handle multiple installations at once. And you can pass a 
> file containing such a list.
> What you can't do yet is to use wild card search, which probably is what you 
> mean.
> 
> I see two ways to integrate this:
> a)
> interpret a directory that ends with an asterisk by iterating over all 
> subdirectories.
> b)
> create a dedicated command line option that treats the given target directory 
> as a root whose children should be searched (could still have the asterisk 
> wild card).
> 
> Maybe b) is slightly easier to implement because currently the script aborts 
> when a target isn't a lilypond installation. But when using an "all 
> subdirectories" option any directories that don't contain a lily installation 
> should silently be skipped. An error should only be raised when no 
> installation is found at all.

I prefer option c) letting the shell expand the expression and accept a
list of directories (I don't know how the expansion works in Windows,
though).

More comments on this script:
What is the minimum python version you want to support?
A help message (-h) would be nice -> how about using argparse? (Not
necessary for this low amount of options though.)

> Yes, I'd be happy to see a pull request

I come up with one branching from the current master.


>> 7. Am I right, that to get the fonts, each zip file has to be downloaded
>> individually (except wget -r etc.)? How about providing one zip file
>> containing all fonts to install?
> 
> I think this would be nice, but only as an additional download.

Yes, I also did not intend to remove the separate downloads.


tl;dr: The only really open issue (3) is the handling of this line:
\useNotationFont SomeFontUnknownToOLL

Cheers,
Joram