Re: Two questions about vertical layout and lyrics spacing

[Frank Steinmetzger]

On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 01:53:10PM -0700, Joe Neeman wrote:

grrr... I _must_ remember to look to whom I send my replies; stupid mutt. I
answered only to Joe again. Here goes a second time:

> > Example #2, padding.png, shows a piece which has a large variation in
> > staff height, because there are either two lines of lyrics to a staff or
> > none at all.  As lilypond tries to keep an even system-system-distance,
> > the result is now that the first two systems on the first page are so
> > tight together that it is hard to make out which text belongs to which
> > staff.
> > The second page shows a similar, if not as extreme, effect; systems 2 and
> > 3 are rather heave with all their lyrics, but they appear closer together
> > than the less heavy systems 1 and 4 to their respective neighbours.
> >
> > My first thought is now of course to alter system-system-spacing
> > #'padding, but I have not found a way to make this equal between all
> > systems on one page (except if I enabled ragged-bottom).  What would you
> > recommend?
>
> There are two competing desires here [...]. Could you suggest, therefore, an
> extra parameter (or a modification to the algorithm) that would give you the
> trade-off you want?

Well, what came to my mind, being a (quite) seasoned user who's done a few
dozens scores for my choir, in different styles and arrangements, is a
variable to guide lily in its decisions, just like two-sided or ragged-* do.

So for example a variable called spacing-priority with a few possible values,
such as system-distance (what 2.14 does now), system-padding (what I would
need in padding.png), or system-lyrics-padding (for the lyrics.png
situation).  Internally, I guess, setting this variable would just imply some
other default values for the spacing alists, as Keith proposed.

The reason behind this approach is that, while lilypond should do as much as
possible automagically (which it is generally very good at), it just cannot
predict every possible situation.  So we're giving it a hint as to the
direction in which to go.

my 2¢.
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