Figured Bass support

[Richard Shann]

(a first attempt to post seemed to go into a black hole ... try again ...)

The figured bass support in lilypond (wonderful!) is a little tricky to use
for three reasons:
1) The figures have to be entered in the reverse order (that is a six-four
chord is entered <4 6>). Of course, this assumes that you do call it 
that and
not a four-six chord, but I *think* is universally so.
2) The numbers are aligned from the bottom up. Again, I think the 
universal convention
is top down. You can work around this by inserting spaces (see my 
example at
http://homepage.virgin.net/richard.shann for how to do this).
3) The default font is larger than is normal for figured basses - it 
makes very good
sense for it to be a good size, but if you are used to the tiny size, it 
is very disconcerting!

The last problem is easily fixed:

\property FiguredBass.BassFigure \override #'font-relative-size = #-3

just before the figures does the trick.

The other two problems can be fixed via the following diff


*** 1.6.5/scm/bass-figure.scm.original    2002-12-15 16:58:06.000000000 
+0000
--- 1.6.5/scm/bass-figure.scm    2002-12-15 17:24:33.000000000 +0000
***************
*** 63,86 ****
               (lambda (x) (brew-one-figure grob x))
               (reverse! (car gather-todo) '())))
             (br-mol (bracketify-molecule
!                   (stack-molecules Y UP kerning unbr-mols)
                  Y thickness (* 2 padding) padding))
             )
        (brew-complete-figure
         grob (cdr gather-todo)
!          (ly-combine-molecule-at-edge mol Y UP br-mol kerning)
         )
        )
          (brew-complete-figure
           grob (cdr figs)
!            (ly-combine-molecule-at-edge mol Y UP (brew-one-figure grob 
(car figs))
                        kerning))
          )
      ))

         (set! mol (brew-complete-figure grob (reverse figs) mol))
!     (ly-align-to! mol Y DOWN)
    mol
    ))

--- 63,86 ----
               (lambda (x) (brew-one-figure grob x))
               (reverse! (car gather-todo) '())))
             (br-mol (bracketify-molecule
!                   (stack-molecules Y DOWN kerning unbr-mols)
                  Y thickness (* 2 padding) padding))
             )
        (brew-complete-figure
         grob (cdr gather-todo)
!          (ly-combine-molecule-at-edge mol Y DOWN br-mol kerning)
         )
        )
          (brew-complete-figure
           grob (cdr figs)
!            (ly-combine-molecule-at-edge mol Y DOWN (brew-one-figure 
grob (car figs))
                        kerning))
          )
      ))

         (set! mol (brew-complete-figure grob (reverse figs) mol))
!     (ly-align-to! mol Y UP)
    mol
    ))