Re: FW: Agreed: my two-penneth

[Mats Bengtsson]

> Actually, I should generalize upon the rehearsal mark thing.  Not only are 
> numbers for rehearsal marks not enough, I need to be
> able to put arbitrary numbering schemes, for example
> 
> I
> A
> A_9
> A_17
> A_25
> B
> B_9
> B_17
> B_25
> C
> 
> All in large square boxes.  The computer doesn't really need to understand 
> this, and it's a comparatively short amount of labor to
> do by hand.  But so far as I understand, I can't do the foo^"escape-to-TeX" 
> thing unless I am anchoring to a note.  I need to
> anchor to a barline in this and many other cases.

The problem with non-numeric \mark:s was solved in 1.3.114.
It should certainly be possible to insert any TeX code
as a mark. For example \mark "A$_19$" or 
\mark "\\fbox{B$_25$}". However, as Han-Wen has pointed out
in some old mail, we should really provide support in 
Lilypond to get a square or a circle around all marks, 
preferably using some small postscript routine.


> Again, this is a special case of a general problem: text anchoring is 
> insufficient.  I need to be able to put different kinds of
> text below, above, and way above the staff, (perhaps all three at once) and 
> all these distinct from articulation marks, in such a
> way that they don't interfere with one another.  I have not had any luck 
> getting more than the simplest tempo marking up, unless
> for example I go to the extent of creating a separate invisible staff and 
> putting s2^"my happy text" all over the place.  I got
> complicated jazz chord changes to print that way.

Exactly what problem are you trying to solve using the invisible
staffs? Is it the different padding or the different font styles?
Now with the new font selection scheme, you can have separate
font styles for every text script in a convenient way defining
your own short-hand macros for each style if they're not
predefined. 

> How difficult would it be to just have a special kind of invisible staff 
> explicitly for text markings that would be kinder to the
> layout than the usual defaults?  It would be nicer for extracting parts since 
> you only want one rehearsal mark on the score, but
> always when printing parts.

I've used invisible voices for this purpose and found it
fairly convenient, see for example the N.W.Gade uverture at 
the GMD score archive. What do you want nicer?

Some people use Lyrics lines for textual annotations.

(Sorry to sound critical, I'm just trying to to find out more 
exactly what you request.)

     /Mats