Re: Jazz Chord Symbols (as new font - NOT notation font)

[Aaron Hill]

On 2019-07-04 6:29 am, Marco Baumgartner wrote:
> Although my font (otf) HAS ligatures (and show up if the font is used 
> on my
> system in other programs) - it
> doesn't show ANY ligatures in lilypond... Can't make it work as of now.
>
> I searched about it, and stumbled across people saying, that this was 
> like
> an official bug. Others saying,
> that it should be all working instead...

Well, I would put my vote on the side of "should be working".  Consider 
the following simple example:

%%%%
\version "2.18.2" % tested on lilybin.org
\markup \roman "fi"
%%%%

You *should* get the "fi" as a ligature in the output.  It would be good 
to verify this on your system.  Then, use \override #'(font-name . "Your 
custom font") and test your font.

> I'm using 2.18.2 on Debian Linux with Frescobaldi.
> And: The ligatures I'm talking about are not standard ligatures (tied 
> to a
> specific language), they're everything but standard.
> But like I said, a normal Text-Editor (and even used on the web
> via @font-face) can render the ligatures just fine.

This may have more to do with Pango than LilyPond, since it is Pango 
that is the one dealing with fonts.  If there is something wrong with 
how it handles OpenType ligatures, that could certainly end up affecting 
what you see in LilyPond.

> Any tips on:
> - where to install the font (not so sure about that anymore...)

You can install fonts wherever your fontconfig is set up to load them.  
For instance, I have my custom fonts installed in my home directory:

  ~/.local/share/fonts

I did this as to not conflict with any font packages that are normally 
written to /usr/local/share/fonts.

> - how to encode the font in a way that lilypond recognizes ligatures

Unsure, but as I indicated above, I think this is on the Pango side, not 
LilyPond.

> - just pointing out, that I'm stupid (that would be at least a valid
> excuse) :-)

If I did that, I would have more fingers pointing back at myself.  You 
would not have to dig too far in the mailing list archive to find proof 
of my lapses into incompetence.


-- Aaron Hill