no Chords anymore after upgrade to LO6 (in Ubuntu 18.04 32-bit)

[tomvdyck]

LibreOffice Versie: 6.0.3.2
Build ID: 1:6.0.3-0ubuntu1
CPU-threads: 8; Besturingssysteem: Linux 4.15; UI-render: standaard; VCL: gtk2;
Locale: nl-BE (nl_BE.UTF-8); Calc: group
Lilypond version 2.18.2

I have used this extension for years, to create documents with music examples. I've often had chords on top of the melodies. In this version of LO, some symbols show up but none of them chords actually.

Below a piece of code I'v copied from an existing document as an example.

<<
\new ChordNames{\chordmode {
b1:7+ fis2:m7 b:7 e1:7+ s
b:7+ dis2:m7 gis:7 cis1:m7 fis:7
}
}
\relative c{\key b \major \bar ".|:" r8_"I - Idom7 - IV" fis b cis d dis e f fis gis b aa c d b r1 r1 \bar ":..:"
\break
r8_"Blues m7-8-9-10" fis, b cis d dis e f fis gis b aa c d b r1 r1 \bar":|."
}

[KlausBlum]

It looks like your system is missing the font "TexGyreHeros". This is the standard SansSerif font used by recent LilyPond versions.

What graphics file format do you use in OLy?
If you use PNG, everything should work fine.
If you want to use SVG (which offers better quality, but was not supported by earlier OLy versions), you need to have the fonts installed on your system.

A more detailed explanation can be found here:
http://lilypondblog.org/2018/02/ooolilypond-part-2-optimizing/
(You can jump to the "Font replacement" section.)

Does that help?

Cheers,
Klaus

[tomvdyck]

Hello Klaus, thanks for your reply

The graphics file format I choose .png
My Lilypond is 2.18.2

I've put TexGyreHeros but also CentureySChoolBook fonts in the /usr/share/fonts directory and refreshed. (I found that one in /usr/share/lilypond/2.18.2/fonts/otf

I adapted my default template with the paragraph added in the \paper{}
section
#(define fonts
(make-pango-font-tree
"Century Schoolbook" ; adjust this font name according to your system
"sans-serif"
"monospace"
(/ staff-height pt 20)))

Nothing changes: chords still come out scrambled .... I guess downgrading to
LibreOffice 5 won't help either ... or would it?

[KlausBlum]

Hi tomvdyck,

I don't think that downgrading would help. LO has nothing to do with the rendering of the sheet music.

Did you already try if it works to compile a score with chord symbols direcly with LilyPond, without the use of LO and OLy? Using OLy with png file format should give you the same results as pdf files created by LilyPond.

AFAIK Ly 2.18.2 doesn't request a specific SansSerif font but uses the system's default one. Maybe your font configuration has changed when you installed LO6. Unfortunately, I have no experience with font handling in Linux.

Upgrading LilyPond to a recent 2.19 version could help as well, because the new versions provide their own fonts for all font families instead of relying on system settings.

Cheers,
Klaus

[tomvdyck]

Hallo Klaus,
Frescobaldi with lilypond compiles my code just fine.
All the fonts are installed, because I can pick the as document fonts in LO. If they were not installed LO would not 'see' them ...

I will try with Lilypond 2.19 and keep you posted ...

[KlausBlum]

Really strange... Did you use the "Open as temp. file in ext. editor" button in the OLy window? This will open exactly the same LY code in Frescobaldi. If it compiles fine like this, the question is what Frescobaldi handles in a different way: 1.) Do you have multiple LY versions installed? (In Windows, that's easy. I'm not sure about Linux.) You could compare the log output in Frescobaldi (bottom left) and OLy ("Ly Output" button). 2.) Both Frescobaldi and OLy let you specify include paths. Are there any differences? 3.) Frescobaldi lets you launch customized commands by pressing [Shift]-[Ctrl]-[M]. The command composed by OLy should be equivalent to the following line: $lilypond -dno-point-and-click $include -dno-delete-intermediate-files --png -dbackend=eps -dresolution=300 ooolilypond.ly > ooolilypond.out 2>&1 Maybe it helps to compare those commands or to experiment with them. These are the only differences that came to my mind so far... I still hope this helps somehow. Cheers, Klaus

[tomvdyck]

Hallo Klaus
2.19 is an unstable release ... not a fan of installing that now ... . For me it's daily use (with Frescobaldi) and don't want to mess that up.
Btw I installed LO5 on my Ubuntu 18.04 and it crashes immediately after the boot-screen of the program. Can't solve that so can't tell if it would work with LO5. Nothing on forums of course because on 18.04 you should normally be using LO6 ...

What I can tell is I have another computer with Linux Mint 18.2 (Ubuntu Xenial) en LO5. Both versions of the plugin (0.4 en 0.5.6) function properly on that one. Without any fuzzling with configs & fonts ... .

Something must be wrong either with LO6 or with Ubuntu 18.04 (Ubuntu Bionic) ... But I'm not smart enough to solve that puzzle and can't find anything about this specific issue on forums yet.

[uliska]

I can't comment on that issue itself, but I want to reassure you that using 2.19 will not break your day-to-day work. The main part of labeling it "unstable" is that you should consider new features or syntax as up for review (where convert-ly should get you out of trouble). OTOH 2.19 is really advanced compared to 2.18 so I wouldn't even consider using 2.18 if it weren't for external reasons (e.g. a client's request).

[KlausBlum]

Hi tomvdyck,

yet another idea:
Could you compile a minimal snippet and post the result here?
This would be the following steps:

1.) Open a new Writer document

2.) Click the OLy button to insert a new object

3.) In OLy, click the "config" button, select SVG format and click the "OK" button

4.) Back in OLy, select the "Piano [SVG]" template

5.) Replace the default code in the editor pane with the following lines:

{
  <<
    \chords {fis1:m}
    \new Staff {fis'1}
  >>
}
\header {
  tagline = ##f
}

6.) Click the "LilyPond" button to compile
(After that, open OLy again and click the "Ly Output" button. I also would be interested in the contents of the window that opens now.)

7.) Save the Writer document and attach it here in a comment.

The resulting SVG graphic might help to see what fonts are used.
Let's see if that leads us somewhere...

Cheers,
Klaus

[tomvdyck]

Hello Klaus:
Today I found some time to figure some things out:
Started a file from scratch and the it works.
Opening my old file, copy a snipet and work on it, save it again doesn't work. (as I always did in the past)
But starting from a new one, everything works (in svg format)
Thanks for this great plug in, cannot imagine my life anymore without it!

All the best, thanks!