Has anyone figured out the coordinate system for the mfc-rect? I
figured out the systems are RECT (50,y,800,y). The positions and other
elements remain a mystery to me. I would love to start writing stuff
that converts things into power tab format, but the power tabs won't
look right unless I get this right.

it's the usual (unless you're on a Mac ;-) coordinate system: (0,0) is
the top-left corrner of the screen, y increases towards the bottom of
the screen.

the rect components are (x,y,width,height)

Width is pretty much a constant (although I wouldn't assume it is),
the others vary according to how much stuff there is in the system.

The position of most of the other elements is not saved in the PTB
file, but it can be computed based on the many XXXSpacing attributes
and the content of the system.

--
Simone Tellini
http://www.tellini.org

Thanks Simone,

But, I think it's a little more complicated than that. The the width
and height is what I'm having issues with. The coordinate of x is
always dependent on the font height of the musical notation, the chord
names, and rhythm slashes . (which the parser doesn't calculate) I
cannot always depend on "x" being every 250 logical units, etc. I am
having the same issue with the position RECT.

On Aug 15, 6:34 am, Simone Tellini <simone.tell...@gmail.com> wrote:

Il giorno 16/ago/07, alle ore 17:19, allpowert...@gmail.com ha scritto:

width and height of what? systems? positions?

Systems are the easy ones: system->GetRect() gives you the exact  
location and size of the rectangle containing the whole system.

The x of the positions derives from system->GetPositionSpacing(),  
which you can consider as their width. To get the first x, you need  
to consider if there's a clef at the start of the system, make room  
for time and key signatures, etc...

as I said, the coordinates of most of the elements must be computed  
based on what's in the tab. You need to take your time to think how  
to put all the elements together: see how the pieces relate to one  
another, what hints you can get from the information in the tab and  
figure out a layout algorithm that can places everything where it  
needs to be.

It's not easy and it takes quite some time: begin playing with only a  
subset of the elements (for instance, try doing only the tablature  
first, which is the easiest part), then increase the complexity  
little by little.

Brad said that writing the drawing code starting from the parser is a  
"fairly comprehensive task". He did mean it ;-)

--
Simone Tellini
http://www.tellini.org