Re: Space between systems with lilypond-book

[David Kastrup]

Nils <address@hidden> writes:

> Hello list,
>
> since lilypond-book makes an image of each staff-system and places
> them as normale TeX lines all spacing between the systems vanishes,
> which looks ugly.
>
> This was discusses already here:
> http://old.nabble.com/system-system-spacing-in-lilypond-book-file-td31930124.html
> and the solution is not bad. But it is too static.
>
> When you have systems which have enough space naturally (through a
> single very low note or figured bass) this method results in too much
> space.  I also use markup-lines after the score for a subtext. The
> LaTeX line-spacing also applies to these text lines so that is looks
> even worse.
>
> Is there a way to tell lilypond to use a minimum height for a
> staffgroup but not with extra space under the system but within the
> system so that it gets exported correctly for lilypond-book? I thought
> of a low, hidden note here and there in my lowest staff, but maybe
> there is a better way?

No.  LilyPond exports rectangular images.  Those can't interlock (short
of using transparency, no idea how PDF fares here).  Now it would be a
good idea if LilyPond exported quite more vertical spacing information
to LaTeX than it currently does (IIRC, currently nothing, not even where
in the image the system is located): that would enable smooth scores
with LilyPond's basic spacing subjected to LaTeX pagebreaking,
integrated with its linespacing (including inline scores that line up
with each other and the rest of the line content), and possibly allowing
uniform stretchability.

If you take a look at
<URL:http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/img/scr-preview-math-rendered.png>,
you'll see how important it is to get the baseline (and size) of inline
images right in order to get a smooth overall impression.  preview-latex
goes to rather large efforts to wrench the baseline information from
LaTeX and pass it to Emacs, in order to let Emacs display the images at
the right vertical offset.

lilypond-book does not do anything like this as far as I know.  Its
output are rectangles without baseline information.

-- 
David Kastrup