Re: alignment of unattached lyrics - opinions needed

[Janek Warchoł]

Hi hackers,

(replies are not in chronological order)

On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 11:21 AM, address@hidden
<address@hidden> wrote:
> I saw in one of your patch sets that you use the word "parent"
> to name a function that takes grobs me and him.  If there is
> no longer a parental relationship built into the function,
> it's worth changing the name of the function.

Definitely.  If you look closely you'll see that i've had written a
TODO comment about this very thing ;)

On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 12:32 PM, address@hidden
<address@hidden> wrote:
> Janek - what would an appropriate note-column be?  If there are several, how
> do we know from user input which one the lyric should align to?

Well, if there is a NoteColumn at the same musical moment we can
assume that the lyric should be aligned to it.  The problem appears
when there is *no* NoteColumn at the musical moment when the lyric
appears (I don't imagine any situation in which for one lyric there
would be several NoteColums to choose from).
An example:
<<
  { c'4 d'2 e'4 }
  \new Lyrics \lyricmode { \skip 4 la4 li4 }
>>

"la" happens one quarter note after the beginning of the piece, which
is the same musical moment as the half note d, so we can assume it
should be aligned to it.  "li" appears a quarter note later, and
there's no NoteColumn starting at that moment.  There's no object to
which "li" should be aligned - there's nothing at this musical moment
except a PaperColumn containing this LyricText.

Anyway, i agree that aligning LyricTexts happening at some point of
time to notecolumns that happen at the same point of time should not
require associating voices.

On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 2:57 PM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>"Trevor Daniels" <address@hidden> writes:
>> The whole point of using explicit rhythms with lyrics is to position
>> them when they should _not_ be aligned with the rhythm of notes.
>
> It's not the "whole point".  Another point is to be able to
> enter/manipulate correct lyrics independent from notes.

I see that.  However,

On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 12:36 PM, Trevor Daniels <address@hidden> wrote:
> Well, we need to be able to control the left/center alignment depending on
> whether the syllable extends over several or just one note column

this is exactly the problem with unassociated lyrics.  Without an
associatedVoice i don't quite know how to determine if a syllable is a
melisma or not (-> should it be left-aligned or centered?).  We would
have to count NoteColumns happening between consecutive LyricTexts,
but how to do that?  Is this possible at all?

On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 2:38 PM, Trevor Daniels <address@hidden> wrote:
> The thing we are lacking is the ability to self-align them on that point
> with either center or left alignment, or better, any real alignment.

A basic solution to this problem was already present in patchset 1 of
https://codereview.appspot.com/7768043/
What i don't know is how to grab the respective notecolumn (i've tried
get_column () but it didn't work for me).
So, here's where i need help: *how to get a NoteColumn when i have a
pointer to a PaperColumn?*

suggestions appreciated.
Janek