Re: can InstrumentName padding centered according to the longest instrument name?

[David Nalesnik]

On Fri, May 15, 2015 at 8:24 AM, Kieren MacMillan <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi David,

First of all, many [public] thanks for having done this work: it’s remarkable, and extremely helpful to me.

q.v. On Wednesday night, I was out for a drink with a musician friend, who “admires” me because I use Lilypond instead of Finale or Sibelius. I used this exact feature/fix as an example of how amazing Lilypond — and the community — are! I asked him how often and quickly new features that he wants in Finale are added… he said nothing and had another [big] swig of his beer.  ;)

And in so doing, said rather a lot!

Interesting.  When I used Finale, I was dissatisfied with a lot, but it never even occurred to me to speak up and request a fix.  Even if I thought that my idea would be incorporated, it certainly wouldn't happen before the performance!

 

> One problem that Kieren noticed is evident in the last example   When the padding is set to 0, all names are as far right as they can go and still be properly aligned one to another.  When, however, the padding is changed, inconsistencies are seen.  With padding = 1, we would expect "Sop./Bar." on the second system to be the same distance from the system-edge as "Piano" is from its bracket on the last system--that is the goal of this function.  Yet there is inconsistency, and this inconsistency varies when padding is adjusted.

The workaround — which is, in the end, ‘perfect’ to my eye — is:

  \override Score.InstrumentName.padding = #0
  \override Score.InstrumentName.extra-offset = #’(-N . 0)

where N is the amount of “padding” you actually want.

Ordinarily, I avoid extra-offset, but I can't see any bad consequences of using it like this. InstrumentName,X-offset actually behaves like extra-offset, anyway, since it doesn't influence the rest of the system.  (In fact, LilyPond is happy to let names trail off the side of the page, as has been noted.)

 

 

While ever-so-slightly “hacky”, I consider this to be light-years better (and less “hacky”) than the conventional workaround of adding a terminal space to instrumentName.

(Which space is an approximation, to boot.)

Maybe the extra-offset solution is a bit awkward with a view towards documentation, but it works well.

Possibly someone can tweak this or that in the function and figure out the padding mystery so this wouldn't be needed, but in the meantime...case closed!

And the positioning is truly reference-engraving (e.g., Barenreiter?) quality to my mind.

Thank you again!

You're very welcome!

David