documentation, collisions, and context help

[George Orwell]

Hi-
A few documentation and collision questions-
The documentation at
http://www.lilypond.org/stable/Documentation/user/out-www/lilypond/Context-properties.html
seems to imply that "Properties that are set in one context are inherited by 
all of the contained contexts."

But I have not found this to be true.  For example,
\property Voice.NoteColumn \override #'force-hshift = #1.0
<b, c d4 > < e f g > < c d e >
does what I want it to (collision detection on the seconds)

but
\property Staff.NoteColumn \override #'force-hshift = #1.0
<b, c d4 > < e f g > < c d e >
does not.

Could someone clarify what that documentation means?

Also, not to be picky, but it seems "standard" typesetting behavior to do 
this kind of "collision avoidance" (i.e. reverse which side of the stem a 
note is when dealing with seconds)- why is it not the default for lilypond, 
as this kind of collision behavior is obviously well supported?

Finally, I am now comfortable with the layout of the site and the 
terminology involved, but it was VERY time consuming (lots of unnecessary 
websearching, because I didn't know where to look within the site) to learn 
to use the non-note-entry parts of lilypond.  Clearer pointers to (for 
example) \property syntax, why exactly you should care what a Grob is, and 
more examples of "weird" examples (rather than just "larger" as are found on 
the complex examples page) would be wonderful.

On the whole, though, great work!

Thanks,
Hans


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