Re: Horizontal offset in polyphonic contexts.

[Simon Albrecht]

Hello Guy,

On 12.02.2016 23:17, Guy Stalnaker wrote:
> Code below produces perplexing results."\once \override 
> NoteColumn.X-offset" works in two situations, but not a third, and 
> shifts the wrong notes on a fourth. I do not understand why. Why does 
> the .X-offset work for ExampleTwo and ExampleFour, but not when set in 
> the polyphonic context ExampleCombinedOne? Removing the \new Voice 
> from the polyphonic context in ExampleCombinedTwo does result in 
> horizontal shifting, but not of the bf', rather the <c'' ef'> chord!
>
> The NoteColumn #'force-shift has no effect in any of these examples 
> (though it does work in other parts of my score). 

You are much likely to receive answers if you give tiny examples 
(<http://lilypond.org/tiny-examples.html>), since 100 lines of code are 
a lot to deal with.

– NoteColumn.force-hshift only works if there are multiple note columns 
(i.e. in different voices) at the same musical moment.
– In polyphonic situations, you should not use \stemXXX commands to set 
stem direction; this will be handled automatically by the \voiceXXX 
commands.
– Lily prefers placing the <c'' ef'> chord to the right because of the 
augmentation dots. I think that is a good choice, but it’s perfectly 
possible to do it the other way. Just uncomment the override in the 
following example.

The easiest way to handle this should likely be

%%%%%%%%%%%
\version "2.18.2"
\language "english"

{
  \time 6/4
  <g'' d'' bf'>2 <f'' c'' a'>4 <ef'' bf' g'>2 <d'' bf' f'>4 |
  <<
    { <c'' ef'>2. }
    \\
    {
      %\once\override NoteColumn.force-hshift = 2.5
      bf'2 af'4
    }
  >> <d'' b' g' d'>2.
}
%%%%%%%%%%

By the way, I wonder why you may still be using 2.17.3. Surely you could 
greatly benefit from the changes introduced since then?

HTH, Simon