[gsharp-devel] ties

[Robert STRANDH]

Christophe Rhodes writes:
 > Robert STRANDH <strandh at labri.fr> writes:
 > 
 > > As you may have noticed, I am working on functionality for drawing
 > > pretty ties to be used with your latest stuff.  
 > 
 > Yes, I saw... one day I shall learn to speak MetaFont.  It looks cool,
 > though.

Metafont does?  You have GOT to be kidding.  

Or perhaps you were talking about the ties?  In that case, thanks. 

 > All of this sounds sensible.  I need to look at an example, I fear,
 > but here are two immediate edge cases:
 > 
 >   * trivially: all of this works only when the two notes in question
 >     are on the same line of the score; 

Absolutely.  And there are of course nasty things like enharmonic ties
that would have to be drawn as slurs.  

 >     however, it will happen that
 >     the last note on one line is tied to a note on the next.  What I
 >     think happens here is that the first note gets a tie more-or-less
 >     to the barline, and the second a (very small) tie from after the
 >     key-signature.  My guess is that traditionally this second tie
 >     doesn't affect the spacing calculations, but I don't see any firm
 >     aesthetic reason why it shouldn't.

It might.  Ross does not talk about this case, so I have to study
sometimes quite crappy engravings to find examples.  

 > 
 >   * more controversially: consider a sequence such that there are
 >     several ties in a row, but one of them is a small tie.  I suspect
 >     that it would be more aesthetically pleasing to have all of the
 >     extenders of the ties line up horizontally... but maybe this just
 >     isn't possible.

I am not sure I understand this case.  

 > > Currently I am working on the glyphs.  I may or may not have time to
 > > write the draw-tie function any time soon, so if anyone else wants to
 > > work on that, let me know.  It would be cute to get your example to
 > > draw with the new glyphs.  
 > 
 > It would indeed.  I also need to refactor and fix what we currently
 > have, ideally so that tie manipulation and note manipulation become as
 > transparent as possible (with fewer nasty interactions between the
 > two).  Sadly, this weekend is booked up, but I can try to work on some
 > code next week.

OK, I'll try to get as far as possible, even though we have a very
busy social schedule this weekend.  The glyphs should be finished in a
few hours.  I'll start thinking about draw-tie after that. 

-- 
Robert Strandh

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