Re: Descenders affecting line height calculation for lyrics in columns?

[Bernhard Fisseni]

Hi Aaron,

thank you for the informative answer!

Aaron Hill schrieb am 20.01.22 um 10:07:
> On 2022-01-19 11:41 pm, Bernhard Fisseni wrote:
> > [ . . . ] In the
> > song, there are some lines with descenders (p, g, q going below the
> > baseline).  I show the effect here by inserting "q" in the left
> > column. Lilypond seems to calculate the "real" line height of the
> > writing, not some kind of nominal text line height, so that a line
> > with descenders is higher than a line without. [ . . . ]
> > Is this the expected behaviour?
>
> No (but kind of yes).
>
> Firstly, \column and \line work properly, respecting baseline-skip and
> word-space:
>
> In your code, you have nested \columns within \columns, which does not
> work the same as a singular \column would.  \column attempts to align
> the contains markups by their respective baselines.  [...]
> There are likely many ways to tackle this.  (Other folks on the list
> might chime in with their preferred method.)  The simplest option I see
> is manually adjusting the baseline-skip between the inner and outer
> \columns:
[...]
> The math above is that two lines at baseline-skip of three plus an extra
> staff space means an effective baseline-skip of seven.

Thank you very much for the explanation!  Maybe it would make sense to 
adjust the manual at 
<https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.22/Documentation/notation/stanzas> 
accordingly.  I was very surprised that a recommended practice did not 
work ‘beautifully’.


> > Secondly, the stanza commands seem to call for defining a two-argument
> > macro like \columnstanza, but I got lost in the documentation on the
> > different ways and the different types of objects.
>
> Perhaps something like this:
[...]

Indeed, thank you again!  I modified this a little bit to do the 
adjustment calculation, see below.  Given the ease of Kieren's solution, 
this is possibly just interesting for getting started with the 
programming and for understanding the object types.  Ideally, I would 
like to arrive at something like

(let ((line-count (sum (length stanzas))))
  ...)

or some calculation of the ‘real’ height of the internal column, just to 
get rid of superflous parameters. However, I do not know how to do look 
into the stanzas (I tried using braces within braces for the argument, 
but that is not accessible the way I thought).  One should probably also 
do the numbering automatically.  (That's much less involved, but I would 
assume it also involves something like recursing on the list of stanzas.)

#(define-markup-command
   (stanza-list layout props stanzas)
   (markup-list?)
   #:properties ((stanza-lines 2)
                 (stanza-baseline-skip 3)
                 (extra-space 1))
   (let ((total-skip (+ extra-space (* stanza-lines 
stanza-baseline-skip))))
     (interpret-markup layout props
       #{
         \markup
           \override #`(baseline-skip . ,total-skip)
           \column {
             #stanzas
           }
       #})))

#(define-markup-command
   (my-stanza layout props number lines)
   (markup? markup-list?)
   #:properties ((stanza-baseline-skip 3)
                 (extra-space 1))
   ; (write stanza-baseline-skip)

   ; (write total-skip)
   (interpret-markup layout props
     #{
       \markup
         \line {
           \bold #number
           \override #`(baseline-skip . ,stanza-baseline-skip)
           \column #lines
         }
     #}))

\markup {
   \fill-line {
     \hspace #1
     \stanza-list {
       \my-stanza "2." {
         "q This is verse two."
         "q It has two lines."
       }
       \my-stanza "3." {
         "q This is verse three."
         "q It has two lines."
       }
     }
     \hspace #1
     \stanza-list {
       \my-stanza "4." {
         "This is verse four."
         "It has two lines."
       }
       \my-stanza "5." {
         "This is verse five."
         "It has two lines."
       }
     }
     \hspace #1
   }
}

Again, grateful for pointers,
Best regards,
  Bernhard