LilyPond — Changes

This document lists changes and new features in LilyPond version 2.21.6 since 2.20.

• A new grob DurationLine is now available. It continues a rhythmic grob with a line, ending at the next rhythmic grob. Possible styles are 'beam, 'line, 'dashed-line, 'dotted-line, 'zigzag, 'trill and 'none. The duration line may end with a hook (beam-style only) or an arrow.

  

• PDF bookmarks are now supported and allow for \tocItem entries to appear in the ‘table of contents’ panel of PDF viewers that support it.
• \table-of-contents now accepts a hierarchical structure; \tocItem entries may optionally take a symbol (like \label) or a dot-separated list of symbols, indicating their position in the score’s structure. A side-effect of that feature is that \tocItem can no longer take a simple string as its argument; a \markup command must be used.

  \tocItem \markup "Top-level entry"
  \tocItem symbol "Named top-level entry"
  \tocItem symbol.list "Second-level (child) entry"
  

• A lyric hyphen may now be repeated at the start of a system beginning with a new syllable:

  

• CSS-style colors can now be used directly as text strings; either with predefined color names (like with the already available css-color function), or with hexadecimal color codes prefixed with #. All stencils that support a color property now accept either a list or a string; in the latter case, that string is used directly in the SVG output. This allows to use alpha transparency (entered as "#RRGGBBAA" or "#RGBA") in SVG.

  \override NoteHead.color = "lightsalmon" \override Flag.color = "#E30074" \override Beam.color = "#5e45ad" \override Rest.color = "#3058" g'8 \huge r4 a'16 f'

  

• SVG output is now available through the ‘--svg’ command-line option (or its canonical form ‘--format=svg’, also shortened as ‘-fsvg’). Due to its backend’s specificity, that option is not yet compatible with other output formats; to get a file in both SVG and PDF, PNG or EPS, a second LilyPond run is required.
• As announced in version 2.17.3 nearly eight years ago, the 'relative-includes option is now enabled by default; included files that contain an \include command of their own must account for their own path rather than the main file’s directory. That behavior may however be switched off by setting 'relative-includes to #f, either as a command line option or using ly:set-option in source files.
• Tuplets can now be printed with slurs instead of brackets:

  \relative { \tuplet 3/2 4 { \override TupletBracket.tuplet-slur = ##t c'4 e8 d4 f8 \override TupletBracket.bracket-visibility = ##t e f g f e d } c1 }

  

• \compressFullBarRests has been renamed to \compressEmptyMeasures, to avoid possible confusion with \compressMMRests. Likewise, \expandFullBarRests has now become \expandEmptyMeasures.
• A gradual change of vowel (or sustained consonant) may be indicated by adding a vowel transition between lyric syllables with the command \vowelTransition.

  { g'2 g' } \addlyrics { Ah \vowelTransition oh. }

  

• LilyPond for Windows (MinGW) can handle Unicode filenames on Windows 10 1903 and above.
• French beaming (\override Stem.french-beaming = ##t) now exactly behaves like standard (i.e., default) beaming in every respect (beam positioning and placement of any articulation, fingering, etc.). The only remaining difference are inner stems not passing through beams.

  

• Quarter-tone note names are now available in all the input languages.

  \language "català" \relative { do'4 sol' miqb re do1 }

  

• All input languages (\language statement) can be entered using their proper UTF-8 spelling (i.e., including special characters. The missing names català and português are available now in addition to the original names catalan and portugues.
• Setting suggestAccidentals to 'cautionary turns only cautionary accidentals into AccidentalSuggestions. This can be used to distinguish between facsimile and editorial accidentals.

  \relative { \key d \minor d''4 cis8 b? cis2 \set suggestAccidentals = ##t d4 cis8 b? cis2 \set suggestAccidentals = #'cautionary d4 cis8 b? cis2 }

  

• Ottava brackets are now introduced with a single number by default (e.g., ‘8’ or ‘15’), and printed in bold. A new ottavationMarkups property has been introduced to modify that behavior, with several predefined lists of markups available:

  \relative c'' { \ottava #1 a'2 b \ottava #2 a'2 b \bar "||" \set Staff.ottavationMarkups = #ottavation-ordinals \ottava #1 a,2 b \ottava #2 a'2 b \bar "||" \set Staff.ottavationMarkups = #ottavation-simple-ordinals \ottava #1 a,2 b \ottava #2 a'2 b }

  

• The command \ambitusAfter has been added. It is used to move the ambitus to a different position.

  \new Staff \with { \consists Ambitus_engraver } \relative { \ambitusAfter key-signature \key d \major es'8 g bes cis d2 }

  

• A very short fermata and Henze variants of long and short fermatas have been added.

  { c'1\veryshortfermata c'2\henzeshortfermata c'\henzelongfermata }

  

• Fermatas and other articulations can now be added directly to multi-measure rests. Therefore the command \fermataMarkup is deprecated.

  { R1\fermata R-> R\coda }

  

• The new Merge_mmrest_numbers_engraver hides duplicate numbers on multi-measure rests.

  

• Swing and irregular rhythmic patterns may now be applied to music expressions made of regular durations, which may be used to render inequal rhythmic interpretation in MIDI.

  \include "swing.ly" << \new Staff \with { instrumentName = "ordinary" } \repeat unfold 8 c'8 \new Staff \with { instrumentName = "with swing" } \repeat unfold 4 \tripletFeel 8 { c'8 c' } \new Staff \with { instrumentName = "triplets" } \tuplet 3/2 4 \repeat unfold 12 c'8 >>

  

• Chords may now be automatically inverted or voiced with dropped notes.

  \chordmode { \dropNote 2 { c2:maj7 d:m7 } \invertChords 1 d1:maj7 }

  

• Some ukulele fretboard-diagrams have been fixed, and new diagrams have also been added.
• Legacy chord naming functions banter-chord-names and jazz-chord-names, have been removed from the main codebase, as have been the properties chordNamesExceptionsFull and chordNamesExceptionsPartial. As part of that rewrite, power chords are now included in the default exceptions; they will be printed correctly (with a superscript like all other chords) with no additional tweaks required, thereby removing the need for the \powerChords predefined command. Anyone interested in the legacy functions may found a (somewhat working) copy of them in the ‘chord-names-alternative.ly’ snippet.
• The \partcombine command, as well as all partCombine-prefixed commands, subroutines and property names, are now written with a capital C, such as \partCombine, \partCombineApart etc. The \autochange command is now also capitalized as \autoChange.
• The New_fingering_engraver will now consider the X-align-on-main-noteheads property of the self-alignment-interface. If set to true (##t), all fingerings oriented up or down will be arranged in a straight column and aligned on the noteheads on the correct side of the stem:

  { \set fingeringOrientations = #'(up) <e'-1 d''-4 e''-5>4 <a'-1 b'-2 fis''-5> \set fingeringOrientations = #'(down) <e'-1 d''-4 e''-5> <eis'-1 e''-4 fis''-5> \bar "." \override Fingering.X-align-on-main-noteheads = ##t \set fingeringOrientations = #'(up) <e'-1 d''-4 e''-5> <a'-1 b'-2 fis''-5> \set fingeringOrientations = #'(down) <e'-1 d''-4 e''-5> <eis'-1 e''-4 fis''-5> }

  

• Skylines will now take account of the rotation property of layout objects. Rotating a crescendo hairpin by applying \override Hairpin.rotation = #'(15 0 0), for instance, will now actually have influence on the skylines and thus help to enhance spacing.

  

• Slight padding added between natural glyphs just touching at the corners in key cancellations.

  { \omit Staff.TimeSignature \key ces \major s1 \key c \major s }

  

• Skylines of boxes now reflect the actual box outline including rounded corners and rotation.

  #(ly:set-option 'debug-skylines #t) { b'1^\markup \scale #'(2 . 1) \rotate #30 \override #'(corner-radius . 3) \rounded-box \center-column { box skyline } }

  

• Two new ornaments have been added.

  { c''2\slashturn c''\haydnturn }

  

• Font glyphs for 256th, 512th, and 1024th flags and rests have been added.

  

• A dynamic command \n for niente has been added.

  

• Fret-diagrams may now be printed left-handed, setting handedness to LEFT (as a subproperty of fret-diagram-details).

  \markup \center-column { "C" "(left-handed)" \override #`(fret-diagram-details . ((handedness . ,LEFT))) \fret-diagram "6-x;5-3-3;4-2-2;3-o;2-1;1-o;" }

  

• The output-classic-framework procedure and the -dclip-systems are now available with the SVG backend.
• An argument, -dcrop, has been added, formatting SVG and PDF output without margins or page-breaks.
• The \note markup command now takes as its first argument a duration instead of a string:

  \markup { \override #'(style . cross) { \note {4..} #UP } \hspace #2 \note {\breve} #0 }

  

• The default fonts are now those from the URW Core 35 set, version 2.0, replacing the TeX Gyre fonts. Note that the fonts come with a ligature for ‘Nr.’; see Fonts explained for solutions to avoid it locally and globally.
• Using the new options ‘-dpng-width’ and ‘-dpng-height’ it is now possible to specify the pixel size of PNG output images.

For older news, go to https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.20/Documentation/changes/, https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.18/Documentation/changes/, or go back to the Documentation index.

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LilyPond — Changes v2.21.6 (development-branch).