Re: Question about left-aligning syllables at beginning of lines

[Janek Warchoł]

Hi,

2013/4/9 Carl Peterson <address@hidden>:
> The best I can do for a sample at the moment is this PDF that is an
> advertisement for a hymnal that uses left-justified first syllables. It does
> not right-justify the last syllables.
>
> http://www.sumphoniahymnal.com/copy-content/hymnal-info-toc.pdf

Hmm.  I see what you mean, but this layout looks wrong to my eyes.
I think that the proper thing to do is to leave lyric syllables
centered, but make sure that stanza numbers are aligned.  Fortunately,
LilyPond already does that:

\version "2.17.13"
\new Voice {
  \time 3/4 g'2 e'4 a'2 f'4 g'2.
} \addlyrics {
  \set stanza = #"1. "
  Hi, my name is Bert.
} \addlyrics {
  \set stanza = #"2. "
  Oooooh, ché -- ri, je t'aime
}

> This hymnal does something else I wouldn't mind being able to do. You'll
> notice on page 2 (with the picture of the print sample) that the lines on
> the left side are shorter than those on the right side. They do this so that
> they can break the systems at the end of lyrical phrases, rather than margin
> breaks, without stretching out the lyrics to the point of unreadability.
> However, this is not the same as ragged-right, as I understand it. The lines
> are not engraved at their "natural" lengths, but are set at the best width
> from a set of possible widths (so that, for example, line with 10 syllables
> may take the full line length, but two lines with 6 syllables may both take
> 70% of the line length if one line sets naturally at 68% and the other at
> 75%.
>
> Furthermore, the systems in a hymn are left justified within the hymn, but
> the hymn itself is centered on the page.

"left justified" doesn't make any sense to me.  I see that both scores
are justified, but with different line widths.  I don't think that
Lily could do this automatically, but it's quite easy to do this
manually by setting line-width separately for each \score (in \layout
{} block).

> Also, is there a command/property for score footers, as in the example?
> Right now, I'm replicating this with markup commands, but would like to be
> able to stylesheet this like the score headers.

You may try footnotes.  See NR 3.2.3 Creating footnotes.

best,
Janek