Re: Naming of staff-staff-spacing

[Trevor Daniels]

Noeck wrote Thursday, February 19, 2015 9:24 PM

> the conversation in the thread »How to increase the distance between systems?
> (new try)« has drawn my attention to vertical spacing settings and I have one
> question concerning:
> http://www.lilypond.org/doc/v2.18/Documentation/notation/flexible-vertical-spacing-within-systems#spacing-of-ungrouped-staves
> 
> Why is »staff-staff-spacing« a function in contrast to all other A-B-spacings
> which are alists? I mean, I understand the extra layer because of grouped and
> ungrouped staves. But from a user’s perspective this is confusing. Wouldn’t it
> be more straight-forward to have identical objects (alists) behind these
> consistently named properties? I.e. a different name for this function and
> reserve the consistent name for what is currently the 
> default-staff-staff-spacing?
> 
> This was not such an issue in older versions because only experts knew how to
> change components of this alist using #' etc. And if the function is replaced 
> by
> a complete alist this is also no problem. But in recent versions one can do:
> \override VerticalAxisGroup.staff-staff-spacing.basic-distance = #15
> and for all other spacings except staff-staff this works.
> 
> I mean, I know why the design is like this, but wouln’t a different naming 
> help
> to make it understandable for users?

A change to the name was first suggested in 2013, see 
https://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=3482
so I suggest you add your support to that issue.

On balance I agree a change of name would be an improvement.

Trevor