Re: Place text next to rehearsal mark, or with left edge over barline if there is none

[Wols Lists]

On 09/07/17 21:20, Simon Albrecht wrote:
> On 09.07.2017 21:21, Wols Lists wrote:
>> On 09/07/17 20:06, Flaming Hakama by Elaine wrote:
>>>      > How can I move the texts to be next to the rehearsal mark
>>> (without
>>>      manual adjustments)?
>>>
>>> Well, you are asking for a manual change (due to a non-standard
>>> placement of tempo), so please expect all solutions will necessarily be
>>> manual.
>>>
>>> Since you want the tempo to appear over beat 2, you could try placing
>>> the tempo there, rather than at the downbeat.
>>>
>>> Your desired solution is non-semantic, so it's coding will reflect that.
>>>
>> Maybe, but placing all related marks one after the other is just as
>> semantically correct as placing them one on top of the other ...
> 
> That’s nonsense, and it is for the same reason that it’s not a trivial
> decision to loosen horizontal alignment in general.

Why's it nonsense? "semantics" to me means "meaning", and if I see a
bunch of marks grouped together, they mean (to me at least) that they
all apply together. The fact that they are sequential rather than
stacked is irrelevant.

 If you shift a tempo
> indication a tiny bit to the side, it makes no difference. But if it’s a
> slightly larger bit, such as the width of a quarter note, then the tempo
> change applies to a different moment. And preservation of semantic
> information (almost) always has to take precedence over elegant layout.
> 
>>> Finally, these two statements are contradictory:
>>>
>>>      A real engraver who wanted to stick to those conventions would
>>>      presumably shift the note to the right
>>>
>>>      wasted white space is high on my list of priorities
>>>
>> How come? Shifting the notes to the right wastes maybe one note-width of
>> one stave. Stacking marks on top of each other wastes an entire line of
>> text - bad enough in portrait music but appalling in landscape (where
>> saving space tends to be extremely important - the music is only A5 to
>> start with!)
> 
> It’s obvious that your use case is special in its extremely tight
> restrictions on paper size and page turns. So I’m afraid you have to
> lower your expectations as to how well Lily will cope with that special
> situation in difficult circumstances. I assume you’re aware of
> possibilities like
> 
> \paper {
>   page-count = 2
>   system-count = 10
>   systems-per-page = 5
> }
> 
> – your use case might take benefit from specifying _all three_ of these.
> 
And this would gain me what? Loads of wasted white space? On a bandstand
that's probably not *too* bad, but I was recently playing and a single
sheet of A4 was a nightmare!

Lilypond claims to be "a system for producing beautiful music". The
reality seems to be it's a system for producing standard orchestral
music. Fact is, there are a lot of traditions out there besides the
traditional western orchestra, and by default lilypond seems to have
great headaches handling what - to a lot of people - is perfectly normal
music typesetting.

Take for instance marks! I can't remember why I had the four marks that
I mentioned earlier, but a large minority of the pieces I play will have
three - a rehearsal mark, a tempo mark, and a melody name. Oh - and
given that they typically go up to a rehearsal mark somewhere near S or
P, and I've known AA and beyond, I don't think cramming them in to two
pages will work :-)

At the end of the day, people want to use lilypond to produce beautiful
music - like me! But to argue that the orchestral *tradition* is "the
final arbiter" of what is right or wrong is simply going to put peoples'
backs up. Face it. I (and the OP) are trying to use lilypond. It's not
making our lives easy, because it comes from a different tradition to
us. And to claim that we're wrong because we're experienced musicians
who've never seem music like you describe (and let's face it, I very
rarely see music like you describe) doesn't make you look good.

Different traditions, different expectations. I know lilypond is a
tricky tool if you don't work with its assumptions. But don't tell us
we're wrong just because we're different.

Cheers,
Wol