Re: alignment of unattached lyrics - opinions needed

[Janek Warchoł]

Hi,

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 9:09 AM, Marc Hohl <address@hidden> wrote:
> Am 15.03.2013 09:00, schrieb Janek Warchoł:
>> I think it would be good if Lily was smart enough to fix
>> user sloppiness as long as the fix isn't complicated (it isn't).
>
> I am not sure whether LilyPond should support user sloppiness.
>
> Either we handle unassociated Lyrics as if \addlyrics was written
> and make '\addlyrics' redundant/superfluous, or LilyPond should
> raise an error about spurious Lyrics.

I agree that LilyPond shouldn't support user sloppiness.
However, i don't think it would be reasonable to treat unassociated
Lyrics as if \addlyrics was written.  Unassociated Lyrics have their
uses, for example to add cue lyrics to an intrumental part, or when
the text is independent from notes (e.g. some spoken text in
contemporary music).
As for user sloppiness, i think that it's more a matter of
documentation - we should make it more clear which methods are good
for which purposes.

> Just a thought. Would it make sense to handle unassociated Lyrics
> like a text markup, quite as David proposed? I could imagine that
> something like
>
> http://lsr.dsi.unimi.it/LSR/Item?id=744
>
> would be quite cool.

I'm not sure what you mean.  The snippet above works well as is (and
it won't be affected by my proposed changes in alignment).  In fact,
if you don't specify any notes simultaneous to the lyrics, you /will/
get something something very similar to the above snippet.  Try this:

\new Lyrics \lyricmode {
  Du lil -- le \markup \italic fis -- \markup \italic ker,
  Du \markup \italic lil -- \markup \italic le fis -- ker
}


On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 9:12 AM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
> Janek Warchoł <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> I think usually this is just user sloppiness.  In this case, i think
>> it would be good if Lily was smart enough to fix this sloppiness as
>> long as the fix isn't complicated (it isn't).  If the user really
>> wants left-aligned unattached lyrics, he can use overrides above.  An
>> example where using unattached Lyrics makes sense and yet they should
>> be centered: entering lyrics for two similar, but not exactly
>> rhythmically identical voices:
>
> Like with \relative and similar aids I am of the opinion that the
> "helpfulness" of rerhythming lyrics should be strictly optional.
> Indeed, generating lyrics from Midi (or similar) or entering them
> without wracking one's brain about the proper melismatic arrangement of
> the melody line should be perfectly feasible.

Do you say this in general, or are you referring to the example i
posted?  I don't quite see how should i interpret your words.

> I know that I prefer entering lyrics with durations over fiddling with
> \melismata commands, beaming, differences between phrasing slurs and
> proper slurs and what not.  As with absolute note entry, I think the way
> in which our documentation tries keeping the more basic and reliable
> tools unknown to the user is overdone.

Do you mean that we should recommend/give more attention in docs to
entering lyrics with explicit durations?

> At any rate, I am quite in favor of \addlyrics and similar _only_
> affecting the rhythm of the lyrics and not other aspects of their
> typesetting.

Could you be more specific as to what you wouldn't like \addlyrics to do?

Anyway, going back to my original question about alignment of
unassociated lyrics: my goal is not to provide some additional layer
of complexity and guesswork.  What i want is consistency for the user.
 Take a look at the example below and guess what the output will be in
both cases:

{ c'2 c' d' d' }
\addlyrics {
  \override LyricText #'self-alignment-X = #RIGHT
  foo bar la mmm
}

<<
  { c'2 c' d' d' }
  \new Lyrics {
    \lyricmode  {
      \override LyricText #'self-alignment-X = #RIGHT
      foo2 bar la mmm
    }
  }
>>

I think this is not a satisfactory interface.

cheers,
Janek