ScholarLy and polymetric music? (bar numbering, \RemoveEmptyStaffContext)

[Graham King]

(This note describes an issue arising from the separate thread, "Scholarly footnotes" [1])

I would like to use Urs' annotate.ily[2] to add some footnotes to an edition of sixteenth-century polyphony.  But, before investing too much time, I need to check whether there is now a way for it to cope with polymetric music[3].  

In case it is relevant, there are two extra features of these scores: they use \RemoveEmptyStaff, and they (manually) adjust bar numbering to be continuous along the printed top staff of the system, whichever staff that happens to be.  This is illustrated in the attachment, below, (which might make a useful snippet for someone).  The bar numbering aims to provide a reasonable way to describe locations in rehearsal, at the possible expense of logical rigour.  For example, in the attachment, the penultimate note of the alto line could be described as "counting forward from bar 9, the second note of alto bar 10."  For the purpose of annotation, this would be "Alto, bar 10."  I accept that this would need careful handling in certain situations, such as orchestral score and parts.

[1] lilypond-user, November 2015.
[2] http://lilypondblog.org/2015/01/introducing-scholarly/
[3] http://www.lilypond.org/doc/v2.19/Documentation/notation/modifying-context-plug_002dins#index-polymetric-scores

RemoveEmptyStaffContext.ly
Description: Text document

RemoveEmptyStaffContext.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document