Re: Fixed measure width for chord charts.

[Richard Shann]

On Fri, 2014-08-29 at 13:27 -0500, David Nalesnik wrote:
> Richard,
> 
> 
> On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 9:36 AM, Richard Shann
> <address@hidden> wrote:
>         On Fri, 2014-08-29 at 16:00 +0200, Jacques Menu wrote:
>         > Hello Richard,
>         >
>         >             \set Score.bars-per-line-engraver '(4))
>         
>         Thanks -
>         I can't get that to compile, and indeed I can't track down
>         bars-per-line-engraver in the 2.18 docs, but I see it in
>         snippets (see
>         below).
> 
> 
>  http://lsr.di.unimi.it/LSR/Snippet?id=838
> 
> 
> You set the bars per line as part of the \consist; you can't use \set.

yes, I guessed that maybe Jacques had been writing from memory and
thought it best not to leave potentially wrong syntax to be picked up by
others. I am very foggy about \consists \with and so on...
As I remarked earlier, getting the line breaks in is not a big deal,
there are only three or four in a chord chart. But I fear fixed bar
widths may turn out to be more important than I thought. 
It is all to do with how people's eyes scan the lines as they read. When
reading text I have often noticed that the brain picks up a word that is
actually on the next line and inserts it into the current sentence when
it is semantically plausible. It tells us that we are actually
processing more than a linear set of symbols when we read. I think the
alignment of the bars on successive lines may reduce a sense of clutter
that would impair the fluency of those experienced in reading from these
charts.
(BTW, sorry for the late response, this reply got lost ...)
Richard