Re: Octave Higher - almost perfect

[Mats Bengtsson]

> Thanks Luis.  That's what I needed.  However, the dots are spaced too far 
> apart for my taste and they show up very light on GS (haven't tried printing 
> yet)  I am most concerned about the spacing.  I can't seem to figure out what 
> makes the space between the dots so big.
> 
> \property Voice.TextSpanner \set #'type = #'dotted-line
> \property Voice.TextSpanner \set #'edge-height = #'(0 . 1.5)
> \property Voice.TextSpanner \set #'edge-text = #'("8va " . "")
> \property Staff.centralCPosition = #-13
> 
> At first i thought altering this bit "     #'edge-text = #'("8va " . "")     
> " would do the trick.  Taking out the space after 8va makes the first dot 
> show up right next to 8va.  Not that I really wanted to do that, just 
> experimenting.  However, taking the spaces out of " . "  making it "."  does 
> not fix my spacing problem.  Obviously, I don't really know what I am doing 
> with this situation, as I just cut and pasted code from the documentation and 
> made it wok for my spot.  I know i am being picky, but if anyone has any 
> ideas I would appreciate them.  Thanks.

The place to look for this kind of settings is the section
"Index of internals" of the on-line manual at www.lilypond.org.
Since the properties you already have set belong to the 
grob (short for "graphical object") TextSpanner, let's scroll
down and click on TextSpanner. There, you'll find a number of
properties named dash-period, dash-length and dash-thickness
that you may want to play with. I think dash-length is only
relevant if you use the dashed-line type, but the other two
should also affect dotted lines. Try playing with these
parameters, for example
\property Voice.TextSpanner \set #'dash-period = #0.5

All sizes are measured with the inter-staffline spacing as unit.

   /Mats