Markup with long notes spacing

[Erika Pirnes]

I've been struggling with spacing issues. In my example below, the second measure shows the default behavior, where the two markups are placed on top of each other. (If I was playing this, I would find it very confusing.) I would like to stretch the long note in the beginning of second measure, so that the two markups can fit next to each other.

I thought "textLenghtOn" would solve my problems but it seemingly just moves them somewhere else, here the other part (see first measure of the example). I also tried experimenting with "SpacingSpanner.base-shortest-duration" but it doesn't solve the problem and makes the spacing look pretty ridiculous after some point.

Any suggestions?

\version "2.18.2"

rit = \markup {\italic "rit." }

atempo = \markup {\italic "a tempo" }

tempos = {

\textLengthOn

s2^\atempo

s2^\rit

\textLengthOff

s2^\atempo

s2^\rit

}

notes = \relative c'{

c2. d8 b

c2. g8 b

}

othernotes = \relative c'{

e8 f g a g2 c2 b

}

\score {

  <<

  \new Staff <<\tempos \notes >>

  \new Staff {\othernotes}

  >>

}

Thanks in advance!

Erika