Actually forcing some horizontal space between two notes

[David Sumbler]

On Tue, 2017-01-03 at 13:45 +0100, Urs Liska wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> it seems to me this should be easily doable, but I don't find the
> right
> incantation.
> 
> I would like to force some space between the first group in the right
> hand and the following grace notes. This is necessary in order to 
> squeeze a slur between them, coming from the dis in the left hand.
> 
> > 
> > From the manual I found
>         \override Score.NonMusicalPaperColumn.padding = #10
> 
> looking like it's what I need. But used like this it introduces space
> between *all* notes, regardless of where it is placed. Trying to use
> it
> with \once it doesn't have any effect (using 2.19.52).
> 
> Any suggestion would be welcome.
> 
> Urs

Urs was asking about this, but the discussion has moved on to other
aspects of the particular problem he was trying to solve.

So I thought I would ask once again something which I have often felt I
wanted.  That is, is there any way of specifying the minimum horizontal
distance that should be left between 2 consecutive notes?

It would be very useful sometimes to be able to tell Lilypond something
like: "Regardless of any other considerations, make sure that the
second note is at least 3 staff-spaces to the right of the first note."

Can this be done?

David