Re: Force text on line without using \textLengthOn

[Aaron Hill]

On 2018-10-22 11:27 pm, Urs Liska wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I want to use TextScript.staff-padding to produce markup elements that
> are aligned to their baseline. In order to prevent the texts from
> moving vertically to avoid collisions I used \textLengthOn (or its
> spelled-out variant):
>
> \version "2.19.82"
>
> test =
> #(define-event-function (text)(markup?)
>    #{
>      -\tweak extra-spacing-width #(cons -0.0 0.4)
>      -\tweak extra-spacing-height #(cons -inf.0 +inf.0)
>      -\tweak staff-padding 3
>      -\markup #text
>    #})
>
> \relative {
>   c''8 ^\test "foobar" d16 c
>   c8 ^\test "foobar" d16 ^\test "John Doe" c
> }
>
> However, this does not only push the next notes when there actually is
> some neighboring text (as in the second beat of the following example)
> but also when it wouldn't be needed (see atttached image):
>
> Uncommenting the extra-spacing... tweaks will result in the texts
> moving vertically which is not desired.
>
> Is there another approach to make the following note columns move -
> but only if there *is* something in the way?

At first glance, I would have assumed the issue is that the markup is 
only considering the duration of the note to which it is attached.  So 
the solution seemed to be to attach the markup to something longer.  I 
tried creating a new voice with skips of the appropriate length.  
However, the markup still insisted on stretching the spacing only for 
the note at the same moment.  (Is that a bug or just my misunderstanding 
of something?)

But lyrics seem to work:

%%%%
  \new Staff {
    <<
      \new Voice { s4 ^"foobar" s8 ^"foobar" s8 ^"John Doe" }
      \new Voice { c''8 d''16 c'' c''8 d''16 c'' }
      \new Lyrics
        \with {
          \override LyricText.self-alignment-X = #-1
          \override LyricText.font-size = #0
        }
        \lyricmode { "foobar"4 "foobar"8 "John Doe"8 }
    >>
  }
%%%%

NOTE: I left in the voice with the skips for reference of my first 
approach.  Unsurprisingly, the lyrics cause the notes to space as one 
would expect which gives enough room for the markup to function 
normally, since I forced the lyrics to be the same size as the default 
markup.

So if you want markup to be able to span multiple notes and stay aligned 
to a baseline, could you repurpose lyrics for this purpose?

Granted, a potentially big issue with either of the above options is 
that the markup is no longer located with the associated notes.  But 
perhaps some clever Scheme could take in music with notes and attached 
markup in the normal manner and automatically generate a voice without 
markup and the markup as lyrics with the appropriate durations.


-- Aaron Hill