Re: Minimal horizontal space for melismata

[David Wright]

On Fri 27 Mar 2020 at 16:04:40 (+0100), Peter Crighton wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Mar 2020 at 10:14, Kevin Barry <address@hidden> wrote:
> > On Tue, 24 Mar 2020 at 15:06, Peter Crighton <address@hidden> wrote:
> > > I want the lyrics to be absolutely free of melismatic hyphens. How can I
> > make sure of that? I have ensured that the note heads take as little space
> > as they can (to my knowledge), but if it is either a short syllable and/or
> > a long melisma, the note heads still take up too much space, so hyphens
> > appear. See example below.
> >
> > You could try using underscores instead of hyphens so that the lyrics
> > are always tied to the first note and won't be split up. E.g., in your
> > example, use:
> > %%
> > Lyric = \lyricmode {
> >   Lorem _ ipsum _ dolor _ sit amet. _
> > }
> > %%
> > instead of using two hyphens (you need to add an underscore for every
> > syllable after the first - see the section "Multiple notes to one
> > syllable" in the docs for the details).
> 
> Unfortunately that’s not an option because I need the same \Lyrics variable
> in another, normal score – with hyphens – and cannot change it for this.
> It’s not so much a problem of ‘How do I get rid of the hyphens?’ rather
> than ‘How do I let the melisma note heads take up less space / the space of
> a solitary note head?’

[I haven't followed the discussion.]

If you put the lyrics into variables, segregate them into a separate
file which you \include, then it would be straightforward to replace
all the -- hyphenations (and any surrounding whitespace) into a
character of your choice, be it _, NBSP, or whatever, with sed to
create an alternative file that you \include in this situation.
You could run sed automatically in the script that runs LP, and
the file would be trashed after use (so you only maintain one file
of lyrics).

Cheers,
David.