Re: vocalName vs. instrumentName

[David Kastrup]

Simon Albrecht <address@hidden> writes:

> Am 20.04.2017 um 17:59 schrieb David Kastrup:
>> Simon Albrecht <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> Hello everybody,
>>>
>>> I’m wondering: what are the historic and functional differences
>>> between vocalName and instrumentName?
>> vocalName/shortVocalName are fallbacks when neither instrumentName nor
>> shortInstrumentName are set.  That's all seemingly.
>>
>>> Are there any? Does anybody have a clever policy when to use
>>> vocalName? Does anybody use it at all?
>> Looks rather pointless to me, to be honest.
>
> They were announced as a change in v2.2:
> <http://lilypond.org/website/misc/announce-v2.2> with the description
> ‘Voice names, for vocal lines, have been added. They are similar to
> instrument names. They can be set by defining |vocalName| and
> |vocNam|.’
> – which doesn’t tell us how they’re _similar_, but different from
> instrument names.
> In vocal scores there is a convention of displaying the name of a
> singer upon entry as a markup above the staff, sometimes in a special
> font (sans serif, narrow). Now, if Instrument_name_engraver actually
> did such a thing that would be a very good feature, and a sensible use
> for vocalName.

As far as I can see, they are completely identical in behavior to
instrumentName.

-- 
David Kastrup