Re: alignment of unattached lyrics - opinions needed

[Janek Warchoł]

Hi,

thanks for opinions (of course other people are still welcome to discuss this!)

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 9:33 PM, Phil Holmes <address@hidden> wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Janek Warchoł"
>> What should be the the desired behaviour of "standalone" lyrics, i.e.
>> lyrics that don't have associatedVoice set?
>
> Without doubt, lyrics that are only a single note long should be centred on
> the note.  Left alignment is only correct where a single syllable occupies
> two notes or more.

Unfortunately in case of "standalone" lyrics it's quite impossible to
differentiate between melismatic and non-melismatic syllables, because
there is no relation between notes and syllables.  So, all unattached
syllables will be aligned the same.


On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 10:29 PM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
> Janek Warchoł <address@hidden> writes:
>> you'll see that lyrics attached to notes (\addlyrics sets
>> associatedVoice) are centered, while "independent" lyrics are
>> left-aligned.  I think that this behaviour is suboptimal - in my
>> opinion it would be better if lyrics were centered in both cases.
>> What are your opinions?
>
> Without an associated voice, there is, with some likeliness, no longer a
> strict per-note relation with lyrics.  In this case, lyrics are likely
> to _not_ be split into syllables.  Typical use cases are songbooks
> _without_ notes, consisting just of chords and words.  Why use LilyPond
> in the first place for that?  Because it makes transposing easy.
>
> I am not sure this is enough reason to make the default alignment with
> and without \addlyrics different, but at least it should be reason
> enough to make the alignment configurable in a very straightforward way.

Well, even if i make "unattached" lyrics centred, it will be easy for
the user to override this decision. Both
\override LyricText.self-alignment-X = #LEFT
\override LyricText.X-offset = #0
will produce left-aligned lyrics.


On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:51 AM, Thomas Morley
<address@hidden> wrote:
> if neither \addlyrics nor \lyricsto or associatedVoice is used, why
> align the lyrics?
> This is a user-error or it is intended.

I think usually this is just user sloppiness.  In this case, i think
it would be good if Lily was smart enough to fix this sloppiness as
long as the fix isn't complicated (it isn't).  If the user really
wants left-aligned unattached lyrics, he can use overrides above.
An example where using unattached Lyrics makes sense and yet they
should be centered: entering lyrics for two similar, but not exactly
rhythmically identical voices:

% engraving artificially stretched to better show the problem
\paper { line-width = 8 \cm ragged-right = ##f }
<<
  \new Staff { c'4 d' e'4. f'8 }
  \new Lyrics \lyricmode { lol4 ding lol \skip16 la8. }
  \new Staff { c'4 b c' c' }
>>

notice that using unattached lyrics allows to place last syllable
rhythmically between notes of the voices.  At the same time, Lyrics
should be centred where the rhythm is equal.  Attachment shows how
that could look like.

As for the off-topic, i don't have any idea yet.

best,
Janek

foo.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document