Re: Moving a tempo mark to the right

[Anthony Youngman]

On 19/08/17 15:11, Kieren MacMillan wrote:
> Hi Wol,
>
> > My usual moan about colliding markups :-)
>
> Given how usual your moans are…  ;)

Mind you, don't they say moaning customers are the best sort? They 
*want* the product to succeed.

> Can I ask why you don't just write a custom function to deal with the various 
> markups automatically?
> It really wouldn't be that difficult, and would reduce the moaning to zero (or 
> nearly).
Given that I can't even do it ONCE successfully, what makes you think I 
can write a function to do it automatically?

While it may sound weird. the reality is you probably didn't find it too 
hard to learn Scheme, because you're a composer not a programmer. 
Because I'm a procedural (that is. C and Fortran) programmer, it's a lot 
harder for me to learn Scheme because it's a completely different *sort* 
of language.

I really don't fancy trying to write a function that is a superset of 
rehearsal mark, tempo mark, and text markup, all in one ...

> As to your precise question:
>
> > "what property moves a tempo horizontally?"
>
> The answer is: the same things that move almost any grob horizontally.
> X-offset, self-alignment-X, and extra-offset are the main properties to start 
> looking at (in that order).
>
> Hope that helps!
> Kieren.

I thought it did! EXCEPT. I got self-alignment-X to fix one instance. It 
doesn't work anywhere else! It must be me doing something stupid, but 
why would it work in one instance, and nowhere else? (I'm guessing it's 
working because it's above an MMR, and not working because it's above a 
note.)

And, of course, in successfully moving the tempo (and pushing the melody 
name up above it), because it's at the start of a line and the melody 
name is tied to a null chord, the null chord is placed at the start of 
the line before the clef and time signature! :-(

So what I'm trying to do at the moment is ...
I want the rehearsal mark sitting above the stave. That's easy (or 
should be, just adjust outside-staff-priority).
Push the music to the right so it doesn't collide with the rehearsal 
mark - it looks like \markLengthOn is what I want, except it doesn't 
appear to do anything! :-( That should push the notes, and hence the 
tempo to the right. Unless, of course, it's an MMR ...
Then use one of the text-alignment functions to place the melody above 
the tempo - except trying to understand what the documentation *means* 
is a major exercise (no disrespect to the writers - I'm sure I'm as good 
as they are at writing docu that makes perfect sense to people who 
already understand what it's trying to say :-)

Dunno where to go from here - just tearing my hair out :-) When lily 
works for me it's great - I just don't seem to be able to get to grips 
with anything complicated ... :-(

Cheers,
Wol