LilyPond Beginnershandleiding

Hoofdstuk 4: Tweaking output 107
}
}
{ f8 c c }
\new Staff \with {
alignAboveContext = #"main"
\omit Clef
\omit TimeSignature
% Reduce all font sizes by ~24%
fontSize = #-2
}
{ f8 f c }
>>
r4 |
This is still not quite right. The note heads and flags are smaller, but the stems are too long
in proportion and the staff lines are spaced too widely apart. These need to be scaled down in
proportion to the font reduction. The next sub-section discusses how this is done.
4.3.3 Length and thickness of objects
Distances and lengths in LilyPond are generally measured in staff-spaces, the distance between
adjacent lines in the staff, (or occasionally half staff spaces) while most thickness properties
are measured in units of an internal property called line-thickness. For example, by default,
the lines of hairpins are given a thickness of 1 unit of line-thickness, while the thickness of
a note stem is 1.3. Note, though, that some thickness properties are different; for example, the
thickness of beams is controlled by the value of the beam-thickness property, which is measured
in staff-spaces.
So how are lengths to be scaled in proportion to the font size? This can be done with the help
of a special function called magstep provided for exactly this purpose. It takes one argument,
the change in font size (#-2 in the example above) and returns a scaling factor suitable for
reducing other objects in proportion. It is used like this:
\new Staff ="main" {
\relative g' {
r4 g8 g c4 c8 d |
e4 r8