[Lilypond-auto] Issue 3860 in lilypond: Improve spacing of \fill-line - user word length not just distribute along centers of objects

[lilypond]

Status: Accepted
Owner: ----
Labels: Type-Enhancement

New issue 3860 by address@hidden: Improve spacing of \fill-line - user  
word length not just distribute along centers of objects
http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=3860

edited thread (taken from  
http://lilypond.1069038.n5.nabble.com/fill-line-while-respecting-natural-widths-td158967.html)

Reported initially by Mike Solomon

If I have

\markup \fill-line {
foooooooooooooo baaaar hi
}

The line will be filled irrespective of the widths of the elements, meaning
that the middle element will always be on the center of the page.

...

David Nalesnik said:

See the attached.  (I just changed a line or two of the definition of  
\fill-line from scm/define-markup-commands.scm.) Hopefully this gives you  
what you want!

...

Ed Gordjin

That's interesting, see the result of the two markups:

\version "2.18.0"

\markup \fill-line {
  This line has got even spaces, or is it a bit different?
}
\markup \fill-line-two {
  And this line has different spacing, it uses word length!
}

Is this a bug in the original \fill-line?

...

Mike Solomon:

It's a feature - \fill-line evenly distributes the centers of objects along  
a line irrespective of their widths.

....

On 02/08/2014 11:22 PM, Kieren MacMillan wrote:
> Hi David,

> > Hmm--do you think it should be added as an option to \fill-line?

> DEFINITELY!
> As just one example: I'm going to use it in the musical theatre scores  
> I'm engraving right now, to [evenly] space two columns of dialogue above  
> a system of underscore music.

> But maybe it should be its own separate function, e.g., \spaced-line, or  
> some such thing?

Alexander Kobel said:

Agreed.  What about \equispaced-line?

The rationale for \fill-line IMHO is only to be used for one, two or
three arguments, which is the common case in headings.  One for
center-aligned (which should be available as \center-line on it's
own...), two for left-right-aligned, three for
left-center-right-aligned.  That's it.  Everything else gives highly
unintuitive results.  It's the analogue of one of the rare features I
miss in OpenOffice vs. Word:  In the latter, you can specify the
horizontal alignment for groups of words in a single line, separated by
tabs.
\fill-line might not be the best name for that, but it's late to change
it.  (\equicentered-line?  Leftmost and rightmost element don't fit in,
though...)  And it's description is really bad, now that I read it again...
BTW, I'd like to see collision avoidance there (and there should be a
comment in the code on what's necessary), but probably it's overkill for
what it's used for.

On the other hand, especially for two-column-dialogues or verses, I
always end up to use manually spaced columns:  I want a consistent
column separation, I (usually) want columns of consistent width, and I
(usually) want the columns to start at the same horizontal position.  At
least if you have several of those places.  Then, it's almost no
difference whether you use \spaced-line (\equispaced-line?) or simply a
\fill-line (as \center-line) of $stuff to autocalculate left and right
margin.


Best,
Alexander

Attachments:
        fill-line-variant.ly  2.7 KB

--
You received this message because this project is configured to send all  
issue notifications to this address.
You may adjust your notification preferences at:
https://code.google.com/hosting/settings