Re: Simple question about rests

[Mats Bengtsson]

address@hidden wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I was reading the lilypond example page
>
> http://lilypond.org/stable/examples.html
>
> and looking at the first page of the first example (Petite Ouverture ...)
> it seems that a rest can have an incorrect vertical position. E.g. in bars
> 12 and 13 the second quaver (eighth note) rest is in line with the upper
> note (the A) instead of the lower pair of notes. The rest should be placed
> out of the way of the A because the A _exists_ at the same time as the
> rest, but it seems lilypond won't do this unless the other note (the A in
> this example) actually _starts_ at the same time as the rest.

I agree that this would be a nice feature. However, handling collisions
between different voices is a very intricate matter and there will
always be a number of special cases that cannot be handled
automatically.

> [This is slightly surprising because it means that rests are being treated 
> differently from notes.]

Of course they are, since rests don't have a prescribed vertical
position, in contrast to notes.


> I looked for discussion of this problem, but I couldn't find any in the
> support mailing lists (perhaps I didn't look properly). It would be nice
> to know if the problem is due to be fixed or if there is a work-around.

I hope the main authors of Lilypond put this on the feature request list
for future versions. If you know some C++ yourself, please feel free to
try to implement it.
In the mean time, you can explicitly specify the vertical position of
each rest, using the \rest command, see
http://lilypond.org/stable/Documentation/user/out-www/lilypond/Rests.html


   /Mats