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Topic: Ghost guide (Read 12030 times)
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Organ Grinder
Posts: 8780
Simulated Thing
Ghost guide
February 08, 2011, 05:20:16 PM »
Some see death as the end. Nowhere to go, moving on to the happy hunting grounds or the seven heavens or baator or whatever. Not you. No, you're far too invested to give up now. With this guide, you'll soon realize that death was the best thing that ever happened to you. After all, without those fleshy meats to hold you back, the world is your oyster.
Allergic to oysters? Not anymore.
Quote from: Ember the Monk
Woah, like, I feel all level appropriate and stuff.
That's the spirit!
There are two ways to play a ghost - either take a few levels of the
savage progression
, or take the actual template. Both have advantages and disadvantages. I might handle ghost brute and ghostly dragon templates as well, but they're not as good. Not handling keening spirits from City of the Spider Queen, or the fake lame ghosts from ghostwalk.
Savage Progression
The breakpoints on this depend significantly upon whether or no you're able to buy off the LA from it. No matter what, though you never want to take the fifth level, since it's worse than a level of commoner.
Level 1
Undead immunities. Incorporeality/Etherealness. Fly speed. Immunity to sundering/disarming from your ghostly equipment.
Probably the most significant change in your character. An absolute gamebreaker at low levels, since you're immune to all nonmagical attacks, a significant fraction of magical attacks, and have a 50% miss chance against almost anything that could actually harm you. The biggest downside here is the low hp (if you're playing a beatstick), and the difficulty in actually attacking. You may be reduced to meleeing with 80 gp
For a more advanced character, this is basically the [functional at high levels] subtype. You get immunity to most save-or-die spells, the ability to deal with a significant amount of "screw you" effects, excellent mobility, and a decent amount of defenses. Yeah, the HP isn't great (unless you get killed by a dread necromancer on a desecrated altar), but at high levels HP matters less anyway.
You also get cha to AC, which is pretty neat.
Level 2
The charisma bonus and turn resistance are OK. The biggest draw here is the lesser ghost power. Let's run through what options you have.
Corrupting Touch (Su)
: An inauspicious start to our ghost powers. You gain the ability do deal d6 damage with a touch attack. You know who else can deal d6 damage with a touch attack? Level one warlocks, that's who. And they can do it at range. Suck it.
Frightful Moan (Su)
: On the one hand, this has a decent DC, and panicking your enemies is a great debuff. On the other hand, it's sonic, necromantic, mind affecting, and a fear effect, and if they save once they're immune for 24 hours. Stupidly easy to counter, but powerful if you can land it. Averages out to mediocre once you're outside of very low levels.
Telekinesis (Su)
: My favorite of the lesser abilities. It has utility. It has battlefield control. It's the best damage dealing spell in the game. Your minimum CL for this is 12, and if you violent thrust big-ass crossbow bolts or sianghams you can easily deal 4d6 on each weapon. Coat them in drow poison, since rendering your opponent unconscious is as good as killing him. Or go for a debuff combo platter, and hurl a flask of torchbug paste, an eggshell grenade(dust), a net, a tanglefoot bag, and a lasso, and then follow it up with weaponry. Remember, mirror images will die if they get damaged even by the splash from an acid flask - if your first two attacks remove concealment and mirror images, you have a decent chance of actually landing the other ten.
The nice thing is, you can scale your use of telekinesis based on the campaign's power level. In a very high power world, you can break out the colossal+++ size categories from epic, while in a low power world you can just shoot daggers or miscellaneous bric-a-brac. In one particularly silly game, I hit enemies with bars of solid gold, just to prove I
solve all my problems by throwing money at them.
Level 3
A few more skill bonuses. And Rejuvenation.
Rejuvenation is great. First, it makes you immune to death once you hit fifteenth level. This limit was carefully chosen by WoTC so that it'd normally be the capstone of a ghost PC (something 15/ghost 5). There are like two or three prestige classes or obscure abilities (like hunter of the dead) that can overcome rejuvenation - but that's it.
My suggestion for this ability is to carry around a Phaant's luckstone (ghostwalk) to get a reroll if it fails, or (if taint is being used) pick up the Surge of Malevolence feat for a +9 on one check/day. That makes you immune to death at level 6, which I think you'll agree is pretty nifty.
I will admit that there's a 2d4 day time period while you're out of commission. That actually makes it more likely your DM will allow it, since you can point out that there's real consequence for losing fights, while still providing everyone with TPK immunity.
Level 4
More charisma, more skills, more turn resistance. Most importantly, greater ghost powers. Here's a quick rundown of those.
Corrupting Gaze (Su):
A gaze attack with a range of 30 feet. Deals 2d10 damage and d4 cha damage. It's a fort save, which isn't so good. Worse damage than horrific appearance, but at least you can turn it off.
Draining Touch (Su)
Look closely at this ability. That's right, you add your strength modifier to your ability damage rolls for this against ethereal opponents. And you can hit any ability score you select. And ethereal in this case is referring to opponents who share a plane with you (since ghosts start off ethereal), so if you planeshift to the material plane and bulk up... can we say d4+stupid ability damage to your opponent's lowest stat? You can punch the stupid right into somebody. Oh, and to add insult to injury, you heal 5 hit points when you do it.
Horrific Appearance (Su):
Anyone living in 60 feet that can see you takes d4 damage to every physical stat if they fail a fort save. Hits every round until they save. Nasty. Unfortunately, you can't turn it off, which makes it difficult to play well as a team.
Malevolence (Su):
Like Magic Jar without the jar. Like Magic Jar without the SR. You want to cruise around in a golem's body? I thought so.
Or you can take the two lesser powers that aren't telekinesis if you're lame.
Level 5
Never take this level. Ever.
Note that the ghost savage progression, like the other web ones, is somewhat special - you
have to take the whole thing at once
Characters are not required to complete all the levels of a given template class in uninterrupted succession. For example, a character who takes a level of wereboar could then take a level of fighter and a level of rogue (or any other combination of other class levels) before taking another level of wereboar. A character must still take the first level of wereboar before taking the second, just as with a normal class.
Full Template
The primary benefit of taking the full template is that you can select your ghost powers from sources other than those listed in the template class, and aren't limited to a major/minor power separation. Changing your type with a feat is also less controversial for these guys.
Dungeon Magazine (130)
Corporeal Manifestation (Su):
Become fully corporeal. Exist physically on two planes at once. Lose your fly speed. An inferior version of the 10k ring of manifestation (ghostwalk),
Water Elemental Manifestation (Su):
Requires corporeal manifestation. While manifested corporeally, you get to use a CL 17 Shapechange to/from the form of a Large Water elemental (retaining your rejuvenation) as a free action. Easy Warshaper entry, I guess, but the prereq sucks.
Laughter of Madness (Su):
Dudes who fail a will save against this sonic mind-affecting attack take 2d6 points of int and wis damage. As with telekinesis, it's a standard action every d4 rounds. Would be better if it had longer range (20 foot spread is kinda short), or wasn't so easy to defend against.
(frostfell ghosts)
Chill ray(su)
: OK blasting I guess. d8 con damage at 90 feet. Will save or slow for 5 rounds. d4 round cooldown, so you can slowlock a couple of targets.
Coldfire Radiance
: Creatures within a 10 foot radius of you take 3d6 damage. And might get a disease. Wooooooo
Frigid Touch (Su)
: A touch attack that deals 2d6 points of damage. It doesn't hurt ethereal people. Wooooo
Immunity to Cold (ex)
:useful but not great.
Spell resistance (ex)
: 13 + HD. Sometimes useful but not great.
Ill Wind of Friezford
(adventure, located
Ability drain(su)
: Deal d4 drain to a specific stat as incorporeal touch attack, heal 5 hp (or 10 on crit). A worse version of the default draining touch.
Dimension Door(su)
: as the spell, at will. Would be better if you couldn't already go through walls. As is, might be useful for a shadowpouncer with LA reduction.
Manifest Object(su)
Materialize up to two objects you're carrying. An inferior version of the ghostly grasp feat. That's about it.
Libris Mortis
(page 151)
Haunting Ghost Special Attacks:
Illusion (su)
: Major image at will. A cool effect, with a lot of versatality
Suggestion (su)
: Suggestion 1/hour. Lame.
Sagacious Ghost Special Qualities:
:As bardic knowledge, based off your HD and cha. Nice that it scales with level, but it doesn't look like it stacks with similar abilities. That might make it possible to double up with bardic knowledge (and make a lore check first, and a bardic knowledge check if that fails), but overall just so-so.
: Not sure if this is really an ability, but for completeness sake I'll include it. +4 racial bonus on three-or-so knowledge skills
Monsters of Faerun
Special attacks
Chill Ray (Su)
: Pretty good blasting I guess. Different from the Frostburn one - this one has no cooldown, but you get only 12/day. The rays are also a bit beefier, dealing 2d6 con damage instead of d8, and their slow effect is based on your HD.
: Wow this is good. Once per day, you can sing for up to four rounds. Anything living within 90 feet has to make a will save or be panicked. Also, while you're singing (and 6 rounds afterwards), all enchantment effects within 10 feet are canceled. Oh, and you can still act after you've started singing, and any physical attacks you make deal triple normal damage (which makes telekinesis even sicker). The only balancing factor is that the ability can only be used once/day.
Energy Drain
(su): One or two negative levels, depending upon the ghost.
Hit Point Drain
(Su): Deal d8 hp damage, heal yourself. Oh, and if you're attacking the target of your vengeance, the hp damage can't ever be healed.
Withering (Su)
: d4 points of str and con damage. On a crit, this is drain. But it only works if the target fails a fort save. Pretty bad
Special qualities
(ex) 12 + HD. Strictly worse than the frostburn one.
Energy Immunity(ex)
: Immune to an energy type. OK, but not great.
Magical Radiance (Su)
: You can make magical items glow at will. That's.... special.
WIP, will update more later
Last Edit: September 04, 2011, 12:03:00 AM by The_Mad_Linguist
Linguist, Mad, Unique, none of these things am I
My custom class:
The Priest of the Unseen Host
Planetouched Handbook
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Organ Grinder
Posts: 8780
Simulated Thing
Re: Ghost guide
Reply #1 on:
February 08, 2011, 05:20:25 PM »
Taint feats
The taint rules in Heroes of Horror are
for undead. You get an automatic taint score,
have no penalties whatsoever from taint. Since taint grants you bonus feats, you may be eligible for up to four free feats! They don't even need to be tainted feats, but your DM is more likely to allow it if you restrict yourself to them.
Debilitating Spell/Strike
Deal some con or wis damage to a single target on a successful hit. Can't be combined with each other. If you're dealing a lot of ability damage anyway, more can't hurt. Well, it can. It just won't be hurting
Eldritch Corruption
: Burn your allies' constitution to widen/heighten/extend/enlarge a spell three times a day. Deals 2 points of con damage per slot adjustment, so best used for improving your buffs with some ability damage healer in downtime. Or for early entry (heighten is restricted to +2 levels, but that's good enough). And I know you're thinking it, but no. You have to select someone with a con score.
Forbidden Lore
While this works with the sagacious-ghost-derived lore ability, the bonus is limited to "supernatural, horrific, tainted, or otherwise forbidden subjects". That is, you're probably only getting the +6 bonus to things with a really high DC. Situational enough that I think it isn't really worth it.
Mad Faith
: Good for early entry tricks if you take it at a low level. If you have severe depravity and divine spellcasting, you can now cast a third level spell. Aside from that, pretty mediocre. Early entry is a little easier to spin if you're a caster and behind in spell levels due to LA, so there's that.
Surge of Malevolence
: A once/day bonus to "any single attack roll, saving throw, or check". That includes the rejuvenation level check. Depends upon your corruption score, varying from a +3 to a +9. One of the few ways to add to level checks, in fact.
Tainted Fury
: Gain temporary hit points while in the fury, but you lose the same number of hp as you gained outside it. Vaguely useful... if you have a
high corruption score. At least you're immune to the con damage and sickening when the fury ends.
Ghost power enhancing feats
Ghostly Grasp (Libris Mortis):
Makes everything you equip ghost touch. Great! Now you can
lord it over those fleshy meatbags. The suggestion from a web article on wizards' is to base your max load when using this feat off charisma - if so, that's even better.
Skilled Telekinetic (Heroes of Horror):
Invented by beholders, straight to your door. You can now use telekinesis to activate unattended magic items remotely. You need line of sight to the target, and the item needs line of effect to the creature. So you can do
shenanigans to avoid ever being targetable, but not many.
Type-changing feats
Let's face it. The only thing worse than being turned is being rebuked. Change your type, and fix that (and screw over all those other hax anti-undead abilities).
Character creation in the PHB places your choice of race and class several steps before your choice of feat. So these probably only work with the full template (it's arguable for the savage progression).
Typically, you only keep the benefits from undead the originate from being nonliving (immunity to most fort saves, immunity to ability damage/drain to all stats), as well as your permanent d12 hit dice.
(Races of the Dragon): An excellent feat, but for kobolds only. Nothing much to say that hasn't been said a million times.
Human Heritage
(Races of Destiny): For anyone with a bit of human ancestry. Changes your type to humanoid(human). Most importantly,
you keep your old traits
. Have your cake and eat it too. Since "healed by negative energy" is an undead trait, but "harmed by positive energy is done on a case-by-case basis, you get both. Also, benefit from your allies' buffs!
There aren't many reasons why you
want to take this.
(Player's Guide to Faerûn): Celestial attended birth gives this to anyone or anything. Your type changes to outsider(native), and I think you get a diplomacy benefit. Good alter self forms, but not much else.
Misc feats
Fell Energy Spell
(Dragon Compendium)
Does a spell grant a numerical bonus? Well, whatever the bonus is, undead get two more of it. It's a +1 metamagic. Have a party caster take this feat, or stick it on a weapon of legacy or something. You'll be glad for it.
Knowledge Devotion
(Complete Champion). Favored of cloistered clerics everywhere, the fact that you get the damage bonus several times from telekinesis makes this already good feat great.
Last Edit: March 24, 2011, 05:12:03 PM by The_Mad_Linguist
Linguist, Mad, Unique, none of these things am I
My custom class:
The Priest of the Unseen Host
Planetouched Handbook
Want to improve your character? Then
Organ Grinder
Posts: 8780
Simulated Thing
Re: Ghost guide
Reply #2 on:
February 08, 2011, 05:20:34 PM »
Double reserved.
(classes and stuff)
LA Buyoff Trickery
The level adjustment buyoff rules are rather vague, but basically any way you interpret them makes them highly exploitable. Here are the three most common LA buyoff interpretations, and how to use them to buyoff your ghost savage progression most effectively
Total Historical LA buyoff. Basically, look at your total LA, including any LA you've previously bought off. Then, multiply it by three. That level, and every three after it, is the level at which you can buy off level adjustments. Decent RAW support, but the problem is it doesn't tell you what happens if you acquire a template at higher levels.
How to exploit: take one level of ghost before level 3. Buy it off. Take your second level of ghost before level 6. Buy it off. Et cetera.
Deletion LA buyoff: If you have multiple sources of LA, each is bought off separately. A source of LA fully bought off is ignored.
How to exploit: take one level of ghost at level 3. Buy it off. Take one level of ghost at level 3. Buy it off... et cetera. Personally, I don't like this interpretation at all, and I think it's barely tenuously supported.
Acquisition LA buyoff: Whenever you get a template, look at your current level. Use the chart relative to your current level to determine how long it will take until you can start buying it off.
How to exploit: Ideally, you'd treat this as (A), getting the template as soon as possible (when it costs fewer xp). Extremely punishing to people getting templates at later levels.
Catchup LA buyoff: The 3/6/9 cutoffs are the minimum levels necessary to buy a template off. So if you acquire a LA+2 template at level 10, you can spend your next two levels buying it off. Probably the fairest of the lot, and decent RAW support, this is the one actually use.
How to exploit: Buy off as soon as you can. This has the side effect of making everyone level 3-6 probably have a LA+1 template, and everyone 9+ have LA+2 of templates, but honestly I think that's probably an OK effect, since dudes gaining power also gaining better bodies is a mythic thing.
Prestige Progression Trickery
No level adjustment buyoff? No problem! If you can't buy off the level adjustment from the savage progression, you can still stay ahead of the curve by using one of the full advancement prestige classes.
For instance, you could take one level of the savage progression, then pick up a legacy item (from Weapons of Legacy, naturally) and continue as a
Legacy Champion
, progressing the ghost template class.
Similarly, you can take levels of
Uncanny Trickster
(Complete Scoundrel) for the same effect.
You'll get hit dice, saves, and skill points for those savage progression levels. Way to go.
Master of the Unseen Hand
For those who want to push their telekinesis to the limit, there's no better class. While ghosts don't (easily) get access to the gamebreaking combination of chain spell and full attack telekinesis, there's still synergy enough provided you don't care about casting spells. And honestly, if you wanted to be a full caster, you wouldn't take LA.
The breakpoint here is probably at level 4; with improved violent thrust you significantly increase your TK damage and frequency, and Telekinetic flight lets you reposition your allies with a move action. Fling Skyward is lame since Violent Thrust
lets you fling creatures straight up. It's actually worse than getting no class feature, since Fling Skyward does it
Ring of Manifestation (Ghostwalk, 10k). Unlike other ghostwalk items, this isn't limited to the ectoplasmic degenerates who call themselves ghosts. You use it, you're no longer incorporeal. If you like touching people, buy this ring.
Last Edit: September 04, 2011, 12:17:26 AM by The_Mad_Linguist
Linguist, Mad, Unique, none of these things am I
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Bi-Curious George
Posts: 505
Re: Ghost guide
Reply #3 on:
February 12, 2011, 01:46:07 AM »
Very cool. As an aside, I think the best way to play a ghost character is to play a kender nightstalker ...
Some Cool Quotes
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Non-PC activities like out of combat healing should be left to wands and NPCs. It's not fun to play a walking wand of CLW. Likewise, being a combat wall is not a viable PC role. A Wall of Force could do that.
-Sort of, but you left out the important note that a Wall of Force does it better.
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Re: Ghost guide
Reply #4 on:
February 12, 2011, 01:50:17 AM »
Wait...you hadn't wrote this yet?
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Organ Grinder
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Re: Ghost guide
Reply #5 on:
February 12, 2011, 08:06:22 AM »
Quote from: Sohala on February 12, 2011, 01:50:17 AM
Wait...you hadn't wrote this yet?
IIRC, I had something that got wiped along with most of 339.
Linguist, Mad, Unique, none of these things am I
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Re: Ghost guide
Reply #6 on:
February 12, 2011, 11:05:11 AM »
I'm assuming Master of the Unseen Hand is going to be mentioned in the classes?
I am constantly amazed by how many DM's ban Tomb of Battle. The book doesn't even exist!
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That explains so much about my life.
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Re: Ghost guide
Reply #7 on:
February 12, 2011, 02:30:29 PM »
Quote from: snakeman830 on February 12, 2011, 11:05:11 AM
I'm assuming Master of the Unseen Hand is going to be mentioned in the classes?
But of course!
Linguist, Mad, Unique, none of these things am I
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Re: Ghost guide
Reply #8 on:
February 14, 2011, 12:10:16 AM »
what about the material from the ghostwalk campaign option book? it has a useful ghost template, if a somewhat problematic ruleset that goes along with it. not to mention a host of prestige, base classes, items and spells specific to the ghostly condition.
arukibito ga michi wo erabu no ka, michi ga arukibito wo erabu no deshou ka?
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Re: Ghost guide
Reply #9 on:
February 14, 2011, 09:22:22 AM »
A note that you can become corporeal if you gain access to
plane shift
or a portal of some kind. You don't count as extraplanar either.
Having a 9th-level cleric cast
plane shift
on your behalf costs a measly 450gp.
Doesn't seem unreasonable to extend Water Elemental Manifestation to ghosts who have become corporeal by other means.
Last Edit: February 14, 2011, 09:25:39 AM by Prime32
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tier system
in a nutshell:
Tier 6:
A cartographer.
Tier 5:
An expert cartographer
a decent marksman.
Tier 4:
An expert marksman.
Tier 3:
An expert marksman, cartographer and chef who can tie strong knots and is trained in hostage negotiation
a marksman so good he can shoot down every bullet fired by a minigun while armed with a rusted single-shot pistol that veers to the left.
Tier 2:
Someone with
teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything, or the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy
Tier 1:
Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything
the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.
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Re: Ghost guide
Reply #10 on:
February 14, 2011, 01:03:03 PM »
Quote from: nijineko on February 14, 2011, 12:10:16 AM
what about the material from the ghostwalk campaign option book? it has a useful ghost template, if a somewhat problematic ruleset that goes along with it. not to mention a host of prestige, base classes, items and spells specific to the ghostly condition.
They say explicitly that ghostwalk ghosts aren't the same thing as MM ghosts, and that when they say "ghost" in that book they mean the "ghostwalk ghost" and not the other kind.
IIRC, the dungeon mag article says it requires the ghost to have both abilities if it picks up water elemental manifestation.
Last Edit: February 14, 2011, 03:42:56 PM by The_Mad_Linguist
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two strange quarks short of a graviton...
Re: Ghost guide
Reply #11 on:
February 20, 2011, 01:56:15 AM »
true, but it is still a +1 la ghost template which is official wotc material. it is an alternative take on becoming a ghost, and i noted that you can eventually gain the same options as mm ghosts at roughly the same level equivalent if you pick correctly. the ghostwalk rules were designed to allow players to play a ghost as early as level one or two, depending on which options are being used. for the sake of completeness and also for maximizing options, it might be useful to include a section on the ghostwalk options.
arukibito ga michi wo erabu no ka, michi ga arukibito wo erabu no deshou ka?
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Re: Ghost guide
Reply #12 on:
February 20, 2011, 02:45:41 AM »
Well, it's really a matter of personal preference. Ghostwalk failed pretty hard at making an interesting setting, and the mechanics are closely enough tied to locations like Manifest City that adapting the material is too much of a hassle for the mechanics.
"Oh here's the true afterlife. It's got some rocks and a spooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooky ocean. And it's so boring the dead commit suicide. whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo"
"The natural enemies of ghosts... are snake men! That makes complete and total sense!"
Oh, and I don't like the "ghosts can't multiclass, they have to take one of these two boring classes" rule either.
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Re: Ghost guide
Reply #13 on:
February 21, 2011, 06:50:06 PM »
Psion Uncarnate PrC ... really got the shaft, compared to this.
Hong Kong
Posts: 951
Re: Ghost guide
Reply #14 on:
February 23, 2011, 02:33:37 AM »
2 things.
First, good job. It's not done and I've already learnt something useful.
Second, Draining touch and a natural attack progression. Even just Claw/Claw/bite can cause some major ability Damage.
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In other words, he thinks there's a "correct" way to play D&D. *sigh*
There is: Kill shit and loot the corpse!
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Re: Ghost guide
Reply #15 on:
February 26, 2011, 11:05:10 PM »
agreed on many of your points. it doesn't help when the authors (likely) have no idea what the afterlife is really like, or what purposes it serves in the first place. at the least they could have covered a number of different styles of afterlife in addition to the campaign setting. i was rather not taken with how they presented what they had.
i did find a couple of options useful, especially if the "doesn't pass when ghost level exceeds regular level" option is used. hence my suggestion of at least referencing for completeness. however, picking out the useful combinations is likely a pain in the rear and a fair amount of time to boot.
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Re: Ghost guide
Reply #16 on:
February 27, 2011, 10:22:53 PM »
Is this the guide you were looking for?
Organ Grinder
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Re: Ghost guide
Reply #17 on:
February 27, 2011, 10:49:28 PM »
Similar, but no.
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two strange quarks short of a graviton...
Re: Ghost guide
Reply #18 on:
March 08, 2011, 12:24:37 AM »
what about the phantom template from mm5?
arukibito ga michi wo erabu no ka, michi ga arukibito wo erabu no deshou ka?
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Re: Ghost guide
Reply #19 on:
March 08, 2011, 02:44:15 AM »
Quote from: nijineko on March 08, 2011, 12:24:37 AM
what about the phantom template from mm5?
La:-- makes it pretty irrelevant.
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Rick Moody is the author of five novels, three collections of stories, a memoir, and, most recently, a volume of essays On Celestial Music and Other Adventures in Listening. He also plays music in The Wingdale Community Singers, whose third album "Night, Sleep, Death" was just released by Blue Chopsticks Recordings.
John Cage and the Question of Genre
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Form dances with function in this "seriously uncompromising"* and seriously compelling piece not so much about John Cage, as of the composer, music theorist, mycologist and artist, John Cage. (more)
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To celebrate the launch of our new website, the TCF presents the Chicago Sound Drops - short audio works that conjure the city through sound, story, and imagination. (more)
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The Control of Teenagers dances on the corpse of self-help publishing; (more)
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In which the coffee mugs offer explanation. (more)
Thrifty Liquidators
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In addition to writing lyrically ABOUT the wonders of the dollar store phenomenon... (more)
Kyenkyen Bi Adi Mawu
By Ann Heppermann, Kara Oehler & Rick Moody
This story is a window into the life of Mohammed Naseehu Ali, who left his home, family, and future in tribal government to become a musician and writer in America. (more)
They Didn't Get Along
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An inquiry into the nature of human relationships over the course of eons, featuring musical accompaniment in diverse time signatures, and a British narrator. (more)
Into the Darkness: Presenting the 2004 TCF ShortDocs
By Adam Burke, Jude Fletcher, Hugh Levinson, Rick Moody & Jay Allison
For the 2004 ShortDocs Challenge, we asked producers to submit ideas for stories about "darkness." (more)
The Color Is Black
By Rick Moody & Jerome Schmidt
Here is darkness, construed as manifestations of the color black through history, space, time, and in the natural world. (more)


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Julia May
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Welcome to this twenty-sixth issue of the LilyPond Report!
No funny pictures or cooking recipes this month, the Report is back with a very serious issue full of long, technical articles. Whilst we're getting ready for the new LilyPond stable release, David Kastrup takes a look at our current development model and what needs to be ironed out. Janek has a pretty detailed analysis of LilyPond's current output and how it measures to our beloved hand-engraved references; at last, the Report as found a new contributor, namely kernel developer Pavel Roskin, who'll tell us about how he saved the world (well at least, the GCC part of it) thanks to LilyPond. All that, and many other things are discussed in this month's issue: read on to find out!
As always, do feel free to post your comments at the bottom of this page, or send your contributions to the LilyPond Report's future issues.
(by Valentin Villenave)
How do you ensure that a Free Software project remains viable on the long run? As Graham Percival (our current LilyPond project manager) noted a couple of years ago, developers are but a non-renewable energy source. The question then becomes: what do you do with however few resources and time you have at hand? Quoting Graham again in a recent message: "I personally am interested in helping people to do whatever they want with lilypond. [But:] Simply creating an atmosphere where this is easy takes more resources than we have available." Thus, perhaps the crucial part of our discussions these days is about organisation : which tasks should take priority, which ones could be automatized, how to make sure nobody's time will be spent in vain (for example by banishing any duplicative work), etc.
Such will be the subject of upcoming discussions, with a revival of Graham's "Grand Organisation Project" (GOP2.0, nope, not this one), to be (hopefully) followed by the long-awaited "Grand LilyPond Syntax Stabilisation" project (a.k.a. GLISS). Where and how will these discussions take place? Via a live intercontinental remote-conference system? Or even in real life (David welcomes you this summer in Germany)? It's a fairly safe bet that the main place will remain our -devel mailing list, as with all serious discussions. (Well, not too serious.)
Then again, another way of tackling the problem would be to actually increase the resources (read: developer time) we have available: in other words, getting one or more paid developers to work on LilyPond.
A way to do that is to apply for grants and hope : as you may know, our Polish contributor Janek Warchoł was recently accepted as a "Google Summer of Code" student, but there's more: thanks to Mike Solomon, LilyPond recently won the first prize in a prestigious music software competition!
Another (perhaps more reliable) way, is simply to ask _you_, dear readers, for money. We're all grateful for the Free Software movement that allows us to do our computing, express ourselves, communicate and create every single day; sometimes our gratitude can be expressed by contributing: reporting bugs, helping others, promoting our favourite programs... and yet, at times the best way to contribute is the most common: throwing in some dough. That's the way the ReactOS project has recently been choosing, and it has been (rightly so, if you ask me) commended for that decision as paving the way for Free Software at large.
The LilyPond world is no stranger to paid development: a special sponsoring webpage on our website allows you to pay people for their work on LilyPond, and you may have read from David Kastrup, the only developer currently listed on this page, as he recently asked you to join him towards a stable development funding model. How's it working for him so far? Read below to find out, and do not hesitate to join the plan!
Finally, another way of addressing the issue is, rather than asking for direct payment, to help our top contributors lead a comfortable enough career in music editing, writing or performing; a career that, in turn, will allow them to work on LilyPond as much as they'd like to. Mike Solomon, for example, is currently trying to raise money for his vocal ensemble on KickStarter; he has been trying to get this announced on our website but there is room for debate as to whether or not that kind of announcements should be featured prominently. In any case, there are a few days left for his fund-raiser, so feel free to chip in!
(by David Kastrup)
Development statistics
As the release of LilyPond 2.16 is looming closer and closer and closer, let us take a look at how the contributions to it are spread out. Running the following Gnuplot program
set terminal pdf font ",5"
set output "contrib.pdf"
set logscale y 2
plot "< git shortlog -n -s release/2.14.2-1..origin" using :1:2 \
with labels rotate by 45, "" using :1 with lines
leaves us with the following graphics right now:
We have 50 contributors and a rather straightforward logarithmic distribution of commits each, resulting in 2062 commits. If we cut the graph off after 37 contributors because of rounding issues (along with their commits), we arrive at the law
Solving for
as the expected number of commits from the most prolific contributor we arrive at
which numerically leaves us with . This is somewhat below the 336 we find in reality, but then the cutoff had been somewhat arbitrary. All in all, logarithmic law seems to match the reality quite well. If we take a look at the number of commits between 2.12.3-1 and 2.14.0-1, it turns out that we had 5242 commits there, so we are still quite below the last number of changes between stable releases for 2.16.
Critical issues
If we take a look at the stream of critical issues that are keeping us from releasing LilyPond 2.16, we see a mixture of several causes.
While there _are_ some changes wich did not make sense to postpone (2240 was one of those, and it has been responsible for several followup regressions), most critical issues nowadays are due to discovered regressions. Our release criteria require a two-week dormant phase in which no critical regressions are being discovered, where a _critical_ regression is defined as something that has worked already in either 2.14 or 2.12.
Other holdups have been the lack of support for MacOSX (that has actually caused quite a bit of delay until we found people willing to invest the work required for calling MacOSX a supported platform). A number of the regressions have been caused by developments of invasive nature: while the number of commits during the 2.14 development phase is not yet half that of those while 2.12 has been current, there have been lots of larger-scale projects.
2.14.0 has been tagged for release on June 5th 2011, about 11 months ago. 2.12.0, in contrast, was created on December 22nd 2008, 2.5 years earlier. So while the density of commits has slightly picked up in 2.14, we also have the situation that so many important changes have been created in that time that a new stable release is rather desirable.
So even while several developers have, for health or other reasons, mostly withdrawn from active development, development itself is still going forward. In fact, there were times when the limited human resources available for working on our development infrastructures were affecting the development to a degree where work morale and atmosphere were suffering.
But even while the quality assurance department is still not exactly overstaffed (volunteers welcome), we are currently in reasonably good shape.
However, both the depth as well as the breadth of the development that is happening make it less likely that the two-week window for not discovering new regressions will pass without occurrences. Discussions about changes to the release processes are slated to reopen in summer. Hopefully by that time we will not be under the pressure of still having to release 2.16.
Regressions, once discovered, tend to be fixed rather speedily. The above table does not show this, but the average life time of a newly discovered bug, in particular of critical nature, tends to be remarkably short.
(by David Kastrup)
So here are the operating results for my work on LilyPond in April, the second month where my work on LilyPond has been enabled by LilyPond users pitching in after my request for funding in February::
Onetime payments (€) | Payment plans (€) |
2×100 80 50 2×25 22 19 10 |
100 25+50 3×25 4×10 4 |
Total:431 | Total: 290 |
The projections for next month are currently €290. There are some ameliorating circumstances for this month: I have been offered €200 if I write a proper bill in Germany for that, but I am currently checking my financial status with financial administration to make sure that I can make use of a regulation foregoing sales tax (this makes no net difference for corporate customers, but private `customers' can't reclaim sales tax, so it would be a nuisance if I had to actually cash and divert sales tax: it is already noticeable that about 5% evaporates through PayPal, and sales tax is about 4 times that). There has also been a payment of €200 from a supporter I had figured in for a monthly payment of €100, and I have counted this for next month until I hear otherwise. So one way or another, April has good chances to meet the minimal target of €800 yet that I need for treading water financially.
While one-time payments have declined somewhat, some more people pitched in with monthly payments for several months (3 to 12 months). A surprisingly large ratio of one or more-time contributors have not committed to regular plans because they don't feel that their own financial/job situation allows them to plan ahead that far. I was reminded of Steinbeck's ``Grapes of Wrath'' where Ma Joad, after getting credit in a store from a clerk rather than the store, says "`I'm learnin' one thing good,' she said. `Learnin' it all a time, ever' day. If you're in trouble or hurt or need— go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help— the only ones.'" Of course, the analogy is not all that fitting since I am appealing to those who have a fortune, namely that of being able to feel excited about a project like LilyPond.
Now what has been accomplished? It turns out that April has been slow not just for me as
git shortlog -n --since "1 month ago"
shows. There is probably some exhaustion involved as we are still gearing up for the release of 2.16 which has seen a stream of last-minute regressions being discovered on the brink of release. But while in line with a general decrease of activities, the list of changes checked in and projects tackled by me still appears embarrassingly small compared to that of last month.
Now like last month, I have been alone in running the regression testing most of the month despite of my comparatively slow setup (James has just now taken over, a development I am not altogether happy with since he already does a lot of grunt work). But while taking a week off for my yearly Easter climbing trip did not help, the trouble actually started before that and is still on:
I was trying to tackle a task involving adding new event types to LilyPond, and I figured out that the current sketchy support for this in LilyPond was broken by concept. So I had to redesign the way event classes are supported in order to stop the existing code example and interface from doing the equivalent of modifying constants. I had to move things like the event class hierarchy into dynamic, per-context data structures, and while it was workable, it was not really a pretty fit. And when things are not pretty and I don't like what I have to program, I get slow and ineffective because I spend more time brooding than coding.
You can find most of the accomplished work in the bug tracker connected with issue 2449 what I arrived here fits with LilyPond's architecture logically (and doing so already ironed out a number of user interface aggravations in connection with fingering indications and string numbers and closed a few long-standing bugs) but while what I have been doing does no longer clash with the current architecture of LilyPond, fitting it as a sort of in-between between LilyPond's grob properties and context properties did not feel good, and an incommensurate amount of brooding and scribbling and bothered sleep was spent on what amounts to a comparatively small amount of actual code.
As a result, I am now working on issue 2507 (and am in the design phase, so again there is little visible output yet) in order to tie context and and user-settable grob properties (which are implemented as an incompatible special case of context properties) into a coherent and user-extensible logical whole, and then fit user-extensible events and grobs and similar entities into that whole.
I can't really think of immediately visible end user visible benefits. But things should get quite more logical for people willing to program extensions for LilyPond, and it will be good to be able to simplify and streamline the documentation sections concerning grob and context properties when I am done, and get rid of a lot of handwaving in the process.
One consequence should be that
\set SomeProperty = value \unset SomeProperty
becomes equivalent to
\override SomeProperty #'() = value \revert SomeProperty #'()
namely let the grob property changing commands (overrides) become equivalent to alist changes of a context property. While the implementation of grob and general context properties at the current point of time is somewhat shared, it is in such a half-baked manner that crashes will ensue if you try interchanging them.
Having a single coherent model for structured per-context data will make it much easier to design and work with extensions, and a redesign of this area will address several long-standing bugs in connection with nested grob properties.
The actual task I set out to do originally (implementing a way to typeset multiple marks at the same place, still pending) is still not finished because of my dislike of having to pick an ugly way for implementing it, and because I am now redoing the landscape in order to make for a nicer path.
And while I feel bad about the sluggish progress I am making right now, this is actually about redesigning fundamental parts of LilyPond that have been taken for granted (or beyond improvement?) for very long and that nobody else feels like touching. And it will not just benefit the particular extension I had set out to do but make a number of things, not just for me, more straightforward.
This sort of ``too much, too late'' effect where I take far too long for doing far more than planned is why task-independent funding makes good use of my skills and `programmer personality': while it is certainly nice when I manage to tackle a lot of small and medium-size things (like in March) that would take quite longer without my involvement, tackling a few big roadblocks that would not be moved at all otherwise is also important.
What are the outlooks for May? Partly due to the recent slow rate of change, I consider it likely that we'll manage to release version 2.16 after all. It is high time for getting a lot of improvements into everybody's hands in the form of a stable release. Adapting LilyPond to using Guile 2.0 has not moved forward in April, and this issue of compatibility and forward-going is likely the next topic of general interest after LilyPond 2.16 has been released.
With regard to contributors, actually not just for my own finances but for the various workloads of the whole project: I'd like to see the load distributed over more shoulders. Maybe it is to be expected that most of the large contributions come from people who can be seen to have a large piece of their heart in the project. But I am sure that there are many users for which LilyPond is useful and for which some progress is a little important to them, and if those would decide to contribute regularly a little, both in the project itself as well as supporting my ability to continue focusing on it fully, I think this could make quite a difference.
My thanks to all those who contributed to LilyPond in April in either
manner, and those who continue doing so.
David Kastrup.
(by David Kastrup)
With the release of Ubuntu 11.10, the regtest suite stopped working
when compiling an optimized version of LilyPond. The initial report was in October. The test in question, tablature-negative-fret.ly, displayed a warning "Requested string for pitch requires negative fret: string 1 pitch #<Pitch c' >
" (quite as intended) and then crashed with a segmentation fault. So naturally the first suspect was that it did not properly deal with the condition that the warning was about.
The backtrace started with
#0 Grob::internal_set_property (this=0x1a, sym=0xb607cb90, v=0x1a)
at /home/gperciva/src/lilypond/lily/grob-property.cc:112
#1 0x082c0c0b in Engraver_dispatch_list::apply (this=0x85d08e8, gi=...)
at /home/gperciva/src/lilypond/lily/translator-dispatch-list.cc:35
Which was kind of a bummer: while it was obvious that
was being called with an invalid value for "this", the displayed caller, Engraver_dispatch_list::apply
, did
not actually contain a call to this property. The function in its
entirety looks like
Engraver_dispatch_list::apply (Grob_info gi)
Translator *origin = gi.origin_translator ();
for (vsize i = 0; i < dispatch_entries_.size (); i++)
Engraver_dispatch_entry const &e (dispatch_entries_[i]);
if (e.engraver_ == origin)
(*e.function_) (e.engraver_, gi);
So the problem apparently was with the function called via the function pointer "e.function_". Unfortunately, both e and gi had been optimized out and were not available for debugging at the point where the problem occured. To add insult to injury, "dispatch_entries_" is a C++ vector, and asking the debugger to display any member of it resulted in the debugger complaining that "operator []" was not available for calling: all of its occurences in the code had been compiled right into its surroundings, and the compiler had not kept a separate copy around for the sake of calling from the debugger.
Now this is not the end of the world: the compiler we use, GCC, has a gazillion options for about every conceivable purpose, and indeed there is one for keeping a copy of inlined functions for the sake of debugging or whatever else:
In C, emit `static' functions that are declared `inline' into the
object file, even if the function has been inlined into all of its
callers. This switch does not affect functions using the `extern
inline' extension in GNU C90. In C++, emit any and all inline
functions into the object file.
To my dismay, the crash disappeared (to date, I don't see a good reason for this). So while debugging became somewhat more feasible, there was no bug left to analyze!
After running the problem through Valgrind, a memory analyzer, we had a lot of inconclusive data. The memory analysis was reasonable: most bugs of that kind tend to be caused by Guile's garbage collector reusing memory locations that were still being used for a different purpose, with the most likely reason being a programmer forgetting to properly protect it while it was still needed.
About a month later, I boiled this down to a minimal example still crashing. It still looked like an unitialized variable handling error by a programmer at first.
I finally got a handle on the problem while trying various things with the debugger gdb: I noticed that it did not just have a command for executing a program step by step, but that there was a way to step _backwards_. One needed to use a few special commands (basically, something like "set target record"), and then gdb would, while eating lots of time and memory, record a history of states. Stepping backwards from the crash, I finally discovered that the actual function that had crashed was not even visible in the backtrace. Now being able to step backwards, I finally got to the location where the trouble occured, and the trouble did not make sense.
It crashed inside of a function that, judging from the function arguments, was not really supposed to crash. Since I could not pinpoint why and where stuff started going wrong, I suspected the debugger of not telling the whole truth and switched the single-step display to (disassembled) machine language rather than C++, to find out the exact instruction where things went wrong.
And it was then that I discovered that the machine language did not quite correspond to the C++ source: the compiler had miscompiled the C++ program.
You can see the further progress of work on the bug by continuing to read the bug report I reported the bug to GCC development and followed up with a boiled down example. The problem was picked up and handled rather fast: apparently Jakub Jelinek had worked on the particular part of the compiler anyway, and thus was able to recognize and test the bug rather fast, creating a relevant minimal test case (which demonstrated the problem in C, meaning that it affected all programming languages) on his own.
The bug has been fixed as of GCC-4.6.3 or 4.7.0. In contrast to this bug which occurred under rather limited circumstances and mostly on the 32bit Intel platforms, the bug Pavel uncovered recently in GCC-4.7.0 (more on that below) occurs on all platforms, and under quite more common circumstances in C++. I consider it way more scary.
Having gotten used to the idea that sometimes the computer can be wrong, I was able to provide feedback, guesses and suggestions when Pavel was seeing a similar kind of problem recently.
With experience and teamwork, the bug was handled much more thoroughly and lots faster than the one I described here, and the GCC developers were provided with decidedly better input. So while we were not lucky to have a fix in the queue already (that just needed to get accepted more speedily and backported to 4.6) this time, the bug turnaround time was still much faster and led to a fix within days. Frankly, I hope that the fix will get picked into the upcoming Fedora's compiler: I am scared by the recent one more than by the one I tracked down previously.
How I made the world a better place
(by Pavel Roskin)
I installed Fedora 17 beta on one of my systems. I tried the version of Lilypond that was included with the distro. It was version 2.15.29 at the time when version 2.15.37 was current.
Actually, I would be fine with Fedora 17 shipping Lilypond 2.14.2 until 2.16 is released. But it turned out that the maintainer had a minor compile problem with 2.14.2 and switched to the development branch, but kept updating only versions for RawHide (the rolling unstable Fedora) leaving Fedora 17 with an old development version.
I tried the stock Lilypond with my Lilypond files and found that it would give bogus barcheck errors.
So I checked out the latest Lilypond code from git repository. Imagine my surprise when I got the same barcheck errors! I tried Lilypond 2.14.2 fixing the compile issue and sure enough, the barcheck errors were still there.
It was clear that something was wrong with the system. I reduced the piece to a short example. Barchecks were gone, but there was another error message about "moving backwards in time". The PDF output was obviously wrong with an extra measure appearing at the end.
Since Fedora 17 came with a brand new version of gcc (4.7.0), the
compiler was an obvious suspect. I tried compiling with the optimisation flag "-O1
" instead of "-O2
", and sure enough, it fixed Lilypond.
I posted my finding to the Lilypond mailing list and got some valuable suggestions. But most importantly, I found that the issue is of great interest to the developers, which was very encouraging.
Everything from this point was done in cooperation with Lilypond and gcc developers and could be seen in the mailing list archives and bug tracking systems.
I started looking for the miscompiled file. My initial approach was to
write a script that would compile N files with -O2
and then switch to -O1
. That approach turned out the be ineffective and slow, as I would have to recompile everything every time and I would not be able to use parallel build.
The approach that worked was to remove some object files, recompile them with different flags and see if that would change the behavior. That's how I found the problematic file, simultaneous-music-iterator.cc.
Then I looked for the function suffering from the gcc bug. I copied
the contents of simultaneous-music-iterator.cc into another file. I
would comment some functions in the original file. The remaining
functions were commented in the other file. That way, I found the
problematic function, Simultaneous_music_iterator::pending_moment()
The next step was to find which optimization caused the problem. The
" option to gcc reported all optimization flags enabled for compilation. I quickly found that "-fno-tree-vrp
" was fixing the problem. At this point, I had a working patch, so I submitted it as an issue.
As a result of the discussion in the Lilypond bug tracker, I actually
had to write a script and test all other optimization options that
would fix Lilypond. "-fno-inline
" was the only other option, but it was obviously much more intrusive than "-fno-tree-vrp
David Kastrup asked me to post the assembly code so that he would look for problems in the generated code. I posted the x86_64 code. David asked me to post i386 code. It turned out that some i386 libraries needed by Lilypond are not available in x86_64 Fedora. So I installed Fedora 17 for i386 on a spare SSD.
But at that point David has already found the problem. The compiler
output in the broken case wasn't interested in the result of comparison
used in the min()
I wrote a wrapper around min()
that would fix LilyPond. But it wasn't an acceptable fix. What if there other calls to min()
that gcc miscompiles? So the solution was to give the "-fno-tree-vrp
" flag to gcc 4.7.0 and report the bug to the GCC developers so that the next version of GCC would not have to be worked around.
I opened an issue in the GCC bug tracker. It had the preprocessed
version of simultaneous-music-iterator.cc
with everything but the problematic function commented out. I mentioned the findings of David Kastrup about the assemble output.
GCC developers reacted quickly and confirmed that it was a bug. However, they wanted a self-contained test. LilyPond was too big to be such a test.
I wrote a new main()
function that would call
with the same arguments as it would happen in LilyPond processing the problematic LilyPond file. I replaced a linked list with an array for simplicity. The result of the function would be printed on stdout.
It's a little embarrassing to admit that the program was printing "denominator/numerator" rather that the other way around. I can only tell in my defense that I attended school not in an English-speaking country. Anyway, what mattered was that the output would depend on the compile flags.
I wrote a bash script that would compile and link the files the way how Lilypond build system would do it. I found a small set of object files that could be linked into a working executable after their sources were stripped of unneeded code.
I was happy to see that the program output was different with -O1
and -O2
optimization. The next step was to copy the needed sources to a separate directory together with the compile script.
I put the new directory under git control and would commit every change that would show the "interesting" behavior. I didn't waste any time on descriptions, I would just do
git commit -a -m "simplify"
I made a few wrong commits, but I was able to revert them quickly.
I cleaned everything I could, removing files, merging them, expanding macros and just trying to remove almost every line. Special thanks go to astyle, a program I used to re-indent C++ code after every round of simplification. That's how I came to a short example that I posted to the GCC bug tracker.
The GCC developers made a fix quickly. It is slated to appear in gcc 4.7.1. I wrote about it in the Lilypond bug tracker, and my fix was committed shortly.
It took me a lot of time, but I'm glad that Fedora 17 would have a working version of Lilypond and GCC would be fixed too. GCC bugs are scary. So much code is compiled with it, including the Linux kernel. That's how I made the world a less scary place
(by Janek Warchoł)
Some of the readers may be familiar with my articles in the previous LilyPond Report, as well as my multi-issue Lyrics Bug Report. Here I would like to present a detailed examination of an exemplary LilyPond output — the viola part from Mozart's Requiem in d-minor (first two movements — Introit and Kyrie).
The International Music Score Library Project hosts a scan of a hand-engraved edition published by Breitkopf & Hartel at the end of 19th century, that we'll use as a reference throughout this article. Will the LilyPond-made score stand up to this print made by a well-known publisher?
You may notice that this score is set very, very tightly: it was common practice in 19th century to use space available on page to the maximum, aiming for scores set on as few pages as possible. In fact, judging by today's standards it's engraved way too tight; no modern publisher sets music so densely — but nevertheless Breitkopf's score remains legible.
Let's see what will happen when we use LilyPond to engrave this piece. We will begin our analysis with 100% default settings — just what you'd get after compiling with LilyPond version 2.15.36 (latests as of this writing) a lilypond file containing just the music that Mozart wrote, without any layout tweaks.
If you have a decent printer at hand i recommend printing both scores and comparing them on paper — resolution of computer screens is limited and therefore some inconsistencies in display appear (for example lines that have the same thickness appear to be different).
Here's what LilyPond gives us without any manual intervention:
We instantly recognize that LilyPond decided to set the music much more loosely: the original fits one page (15 systems), while Lily's version is 1,5 pages long (21 systems). I personally find it a bit too "airy". While you don't have to agree with my opinion on this matter, my goal in engraving this piece was specifically to demonstrate that LilyPond can produce music set as tightly as the Breitkopf edition (one of the violists in our orchestra said that she much prefers tightly set scores). Also, sometimes there is no other choice than to set music tightly - for example when optimal page breaking requires putting a lot of music on one page, or when measures are so long and full of notes that they simply need serious squeezing to fit on the page at all.
Thus, let's change the overall horizontal spacing to see how Lily will handle it. Some of the problems in engravings below will appear exactly because of this decision, but generally condensing the music doesn't change much in program's behaviour — most things you can also find in the uncondensed version.
To change horizontal spacing, I use the method mentioned in the manuals:
\override Score.SpacingSpanner #'common-shortest-duration = #(ly:make-moment 1 4 )
Here are the results:
That's definitely tighter than the default output — I quite like it! However, have a look at letter E
, measures 49-52
(after the tempo change): these are four measures, each filled with rests. What for? That's a waste of space; they should be typeset as a MultiMeasure rest. Of course, it's easy to add a \compressFullBarRests
command, but I don't quite get the point why this isn't the default behavior. I don't recall any score in which the rests weren't compressed...
Going back to the horizontal spacing: the result is now nicer, but still not as tight as the Breitkopf engraving. Let's try more:
\override Score.SpacingSpanner #'common-shortest-duration = #(ly:make-moment 1 1 )
What's that? Nothing changed... or did it?
Yes, there are changes, but not for the best at all — the spacing went all weird, see the markings here:
(I suggest you to do an Alt-Tab comparison, i.e. open both files in full size and switch between the windows (or browser tabs) using Alt-Tab or whatever shortcut your operating system uses)
I find this behavior very strange, not only because it results in a clearly ugly spacing, but also because obviously there is still a lot of whitespace left between the notes, so it *should be possible* to actually do some shrinking. For example, 16ths are separated with about 0.5 staffspace, while in hand-engraved scores it is not uncommon for short notes to almost touch each other. Consider the fourth system: there are twenty-four 16th notes in it. Reducing the space between them to 0.1 staffspace — that's close, but still legible — would be enough to add another measure to that system (without changing anything about longer notes' spacing)! The situation is very similar in systems 10 and 14.
Ok, so how to achieve spacing as tight as in Breitkopf edition? I've tried forcing the number of systems, but this resulted in music overflowing the page in the last system. Finally i managed to do this by reducing font size to 18 and forcing page-count to 1, but it's not exactly what i was looking for.
As you can see, this setting revealed some problems that were not instantly recognizable in the previous versions — for example the piano in measure 46 and the F
rehearsal mark seemed previously okay, but here it is obvious that they stick out too much. If you look closely at the hand-engraved edition, you'll see that the F
rehearsal mark is not perfectly centered on the barline, but shifted a bit to the right, to allow placing it closer to the staffline. Dynamic stickout is greatly reduced in Breitkopf's edition by moving the dynamic horizontally — see measure 26 for an example. This isn't hard to fix in LilyPond — but it seems possible to automate such decisions.
Nevertheless, as I've said; the Breitkopf edition is set too tight, so let's go back to the Lily version created by overriding the common shortest duration to 1/4 — it is definitely the best. Time to examine it closely.
The first thing that drew my attention was bes32\f g'16. es32
figure in measure 26: Lily output is very "airy" compared to the engraved version:
That's because the distances between notes, augmentation dots and accidentals are much smaller in Breitkopf score. LilyPond's distances are quite good for "normal" scores, but they stay the same even when notes are placed very close to each other, leading to poor results in tight scores - see also issue 2142 in our tracker (it is about accidental spacing, but the problem is really similar in case of any other object).
So, I've overriden the spacing properties of dots and accidentals to have these objects closer to notes:
Unfortunately, this solution isn't perfect — while flats and sharps are positioned quite nicely, the naturals are definitely too close when the notes are down-stemmed:
To achieve a pleasing result one would have to write a function that would apply a different right-padding depending on the type of accidental and stem direction. While that's doable, I think it would make more sense to write a "true & complete" fix for issue 2142 to get rid of this problem once and for all.
Going back to note spacing, all 16th notes seem to get too much space, at least compared to longer notes: there is little difference between 8ths and 16ths in this regard, unlike in the Breitkopf score:
There are more issues present, marked in the pdf below. For greater clarity, only one instance of a problem is marked in color (additional places where an issue appears are marked in gray).
When you hover your mouse over the markings, you should see an explanation text. I know that this feature works for me when i open pdfs using Adobe Reader (for example the one bundled inside Firefox). If you don't see explanation texts, please download the pdf and try some external viewer (for example Okular).
That concludes my analysis. For an almost-default output, the results of LilyPond work are quite impressive — but they're not a publication-quality engraving yet: there are noticeable flaws. Most of them concern note spacing and beaming, some are caused by lack of intelligent and flexible placement of objects like dynamics and rehearsal marks. The most visible things are easy to fix manually - after all, no computer program will be smart enough to engrave everything perfectly. However, all the problems present seem to be fixable (in other words, it should be possible to write an algorithm that would solve them).
There surely is lots of room for our Development Team to improve things (and we encourage you to help us!)
What are your opinions? I invite you to discuss this engraving - either in comments here, or on LilyPond development mailing list.
Post Scriptum: wrong positioning of the augmentation dot in measure 31 was fixed in LilyPond's version 2.15.38.
(by Valentin Villenave)
Anyone who has been discovering and using LilyPond in the past decade will tell you about the wonder and bewilderment that we encounter when we compile our first scores and discover the beautiful results. And yet, anyone who has been using LilyPond a tad bit longer, will also testify to the incredibly annoying limitations we're all bound to stumble upon, sooner or later.
Of all these bugs, one that annoys me the most is the way LilyPond writes tuplets: it can't handle slur-shaped tuplet brackets, it tends to be dumb when placing its tuplet brackets, and most of all it has absolutely no idea where to place cross-staff tuplets, which may result in ugly collisions.
Which is why I was thrilled to recently (re)discover this snippet, that does make things look (a little) better.
Here's the code, I'm not sure who is to thank for this snippet but it's well written and nicely commented.
(by Valentin Villenave)
It is not uncommon for some advanced LilyPonders, to use invisible "anchors" in their music. These can be useful for adding text above full-measure rests...
\relative c'{
to end crescendos more elegantly...
\relative c'{
d2\> c\!
d2\>^"better:" c s1*0\!
or to integrate articulations and texts with music stored in a variable:
notes = \relative c'{
c4 c g' g c,1
\score {
\new Voice {
s1*0-> \notes
<< { s1 s1*0\fermata} { \oneVoice \notes } >>
However, this syntax has a pitfall: using an invisible rest with a null duration, effectively changes the "last-used-duration" for LilyPond, and therefore can play tricks with your score depending on how you use it (see below).
Earlier this month, David Kastrup noticed that there actually always had been an other way to enter an invisible anchor in LilyPond: the empty chord construct, noted as <>
. He went on to explain how that might prove to be less confusing for users:
Quick: tell me what you would expect without too much thinking (imagine you are a naive user) from the following:
\new Staff <<
\relative c'' { c4 d e f s1*0-\markup Oops c d e f g1 } \\
\relative c' { c4 d e f <>-\markup Wow c d e f g1 }
Whilst he definitely had a point there, and nobody is really happy with s1*0
, some contributors disagreed with the idea of somehow "officially" advertising the <>
syntax in our documentation, to the point where names were called (Haskell, really? That's a bit harsh.) and people appeared to be on the verge of leaving the project altogether! If we had not known this already, it again shows that LilyPond developers can be quite passionate about details.
As for me, all I can see is the awesomeness of discovering an undocumented feature that has been right there under our noses for 16 years. That alone, without any parser modification needed or whatever, is terrifically cool from a pure geek point of view. (To what David accurately told me: "Well, that was part of the problem. It was divisive between geeks and non-geeks." And LilyPond is, and must remain, meant for both types of people.)
Then the question remains: is <>
elegant and "LilyPond-ish" enough to get a prominent place in our manuals? I'd say it is, but history has proven there's room for flamewar debate here. Whether we end up including it, implementing a new keyword (either \null
or, to avoid confusion with the markup command of the same name, something else, or even a new letter such as z
) which would require a parser modification, or — much more likely — nothing at all and just stick with s1*0
until someone resuscitate the issue in a dozen years, it really doesn't matter that much. Invisible anchors are really not used everyday for an average LilyPonder; and when they are, I suspect whoever uses them is already advanced enough to be able to cope with whatever is thrown at her, be it tricky null durations, new parser keywords/letters or weird Haskell-like constructs.
The closing word for now will be this comment from Janek, as I was telling him how hard reading the thread made me laugh: "I can't believe you guys went all flaming for such a silly thing!" — "Well, he replied, I couldn't believe that you quit LilyPond for a few months last year because of a silly mailing list question ."
Oh, well. Touché.
Here endeth the twenty-sixth issue of the LilyPond Report. With just a bit of luck, our next installment will be released after the upcoming LilyPond stable release, and there will be a lot to report vis-à-vis brand new exciting work being started...
In the meantime, feel free to send us your contributions !
David Kastrup, Janek Warchoł & Valentin Villenave


text:
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Distinctions in 5 modules which must include:
Notes A new scoring system for FETAC awards will apply for entry through the CAO from 2013. Click here for details >>
Career Guidance Toolbox Explore Yourself .... Self-Assessment


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The Toyota Corolla compact sedan is one of the best-selling vehicles worldwide, nearing...
Power Wagon ad hits all the right notes
The sardonic auto classified is seldom spotted outside of Craigslist, so finding one over at Hemmings is a bit surprising–especially since the ad is for a rare 1956 Dodge Power Wagon "swivel frame" rather than some barely drivable hooptie.
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