Hello,
I've been working on typesetting hymns, and part of our style is that we want the systems to be full width (ragged_right is false), but we also explicitly break systems on hymn phrase boundaries. That means that we often have more than a typical amount of extra white space available, which lilypond then distributes between the various objects in the system. My problem is that I don't like the choices that lilypond is making and can't figure out how to control it.
I've attached to clips from Abide With Me to illustrate the problem. These are clips of the top half of one system; one with ragged_right false; and one with ragged_right true.
It all looks good when ragged right is true - all the notes and lyrics have nice even separation and are easy to read. When stretched to the full page width, extra space is added, it seems, based upon the length of the notes - so the half notes get more space than the quarter notes, and the whole note gets more than all the rest. What I'd most prefer is that the extra white space is distributed between all the notes more evenly. Some slight preference based upon the length of the note is ok; but not nearly as much as is occurring in this example.
Here are the layout overrides I'm currently using:
\layout {
#(layout-set-staff-size 18)
\context {
\Lyrics
\override LyricSpace.minimum-distance = #3
\override LyricText.font-size = #0
\override LyricText.self-alignment-X = #CENTER
\override LyricHyphen.thickness = #1
\override LyricHyphen.length = #1.0
\override VerticalAxisGroup.nonstaff-nonstaff-spacing =
#'((basic-distance . 0)
(minimum-distance . 0)
(padding . 0.85)
(stretchability . 0))
}
\context {
\Staff
\override StaffSymbol.thickness = #1
\override NoteHead.font-size = #1
#(if MajorKey #{ \aikenHeads #} #{ \aikenHeadsMinor #})
}
\context {
\Score
\remove "Bar_number_engraver"
}
}
Thanks in advance for any guidance you can give me.
Jim
abide_with_me_ragged_right_false_snippet.png
abide_with_me_ragged_right_true_snippet.png