Re: line breaks and broken beams

[Joe Neeman]

On Wed, 2009-10-28 at 21:54 +0100, Nicolas Sceaux wrote:
> Le 28 oct. 09 à 08:37, David Kastrup a écrit :
> 
> > Carl Sorensen <address@hidden> writes:
> >
> >> Isn't the problem that beams create melismata in vocal music, and you
> >> don't want to have a line break in the middle of a melisma?
> >
> > Baroque melisme can go on for lines.  Do we have a way to discourage
> > breaks but not completely disallow them?
> 
> Absolutely.
> Last week, while typesetting a chorus from Messiah with many beams  
> crossing
> bar lines, I was about to report that as a bug. The lines were just  
> running out
> of the page, which is a bug, period.
> In an ideal world, LilyPond would try not to break beams, but not  
> forbid it.
> In a "worst is better" world (that is, our world), breaking beams is  
> just not
> forbidden.

The line breaker has support for arbitrary penalties. If we had a
thorough set of examples, we could try to find a penalty that works
well. I'm reluctant, though, to just stick in an arbitrary penalty.

Joe