I have been experimenting with typesetting some 17th century music for viol; you can see an example of the sort of music I'm trying to emulate at
https://bit.ly/3Ympevo As is common with tablature; there is the tablature stave, showing the positions of the fingers on the fingerboard, and a set of notes above showing the rhythm. (As with almost all tablature, a note value is repeated until a new value is needed. So repeated notes aren't shown in the rhythm line.) About a year ago, two very kind people on this list sent me examples of their work, and I've been using their ideas to develop some rough templates. But it still requires two staves: the tablature stave, and the rhythm stave. And these need to be entered separately. The rhythm stave has to be set up using a RhythmicStaff but without clef or time signature, and also removing the staff engraver. Given that a normal instrument music definition includes information both about pitch and about duration - suitable for printing on a standard staff - why cannot that same input be used to create all the tablature and its rhythm together? In my ideal world you'd enter the notes as if you were going to print on a modern staff, but instead ask to print it as tablature, and get both the tab staff and the rhythm staff all created from the one definition. (I hope I've made myself clear!) Many thanks, Alasdair -- Alasdair McAndrew (he/him) mob: 0432 854 858 https://numbersandshapes.net
