Re: "HaraKiriLyrics"?

[Graham Percival]

On Mon, 27 Jan 2003 03:28:27 +0100
Florian Zumbiehl <address@hidden> wrote:
> > > is it possible to do with lyrics what a HaraKiriStaff does with
> > > notes (that is, let it not take up any space where there is no
> [...]
> > I'm not certain exactly what you want -- could you send a short
> > example?(to the mail list, not just me personally.  I didn't include
> > lilypond-user since this email has even less information content
> > than normal.  :)
> 
> OK, here it is - though the source is quite much the opposite of
> short (ok, it's not exactly long either, but normally I think of short
> as a little fewer lines :-), but I had no idea how to strip it down
> even further.
> 
> When you render it, there should appear two lines of completely
> "empty lyrics" - that's the space I'd like to save. In the actual
> piece, there are three stanzas and five voices, some of which often
> share the same text, so there is quite a lot of space to save there.

I can only think of one way:
- use empty lyrics (as you've done)
- manually control the space between each pair of staffs (I know it's
possible; look in the more advanced sections of the manual and/or the
input/test, input/regression, and tips n' tricks areas) to print the
staffs closer together.

I would guess that it isn't worth doing it, though.  Quite messy and
complicated, and I'm not certain how many pages you'd save in the end.

Cheers,
- Graham