Re: Text centralized above a TextSpan

[Simon Albrecht]

On 23.09.2015 01:20, David Kastrup wrote:
> Simon Albrecht <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > I made an essay on a simpler input interface, which redefines
> > \startTextSpan as a music function. That would be much preferable at
> > least in my eyes. What do you think?
> > (I hope there wouldn’t be any merge conflicts here…)
> > However, I’m having a problem with this syntax: the attached file
> > gives lots of
> >
> > "text-spanner-inner-text-lyric-mode.ly:615:5: error: wrong type for
> > argument 3.  Expecting music, found #<Music function #<procedure #f
> > (arg)>>
> >    c1
> >      \startTextSpan \lyricmode { ral -- len -- tan -- do }"
> >
> > upon compiling. And I don’t know what my mistake would be…
> It's the last line before %%% EXAMPLES where you enter some strange
> recursion.  You probably should first save the old value of
> \startTextSpan in some differently named variable and use that.  But
> really: reusing an existing command name is a bad idea to start with.

I think it’s eventually a good idea to replace the definition of 
\startTextSpan, firstly because it’s the most convenient sort of 
interface for this custom function. And secondly: _Any_ sensible use of 
text spanners now requires a quite complicated \override, even most 
common cases:
%%%%%%%%%%%
\relative {
  \override TextSpanner.bound-details.left.text = "rit."
  b'1\startTextSpan
  e,\stopTextSpan
}
%%%%%%%%%%%
Being able to input the same as
%%%%%%%%%%%
\relative {
  b'1\startTextSpan \lyricmode { rit. }
  e,\stopTextSpan
}
%%%%%%%%%%%
would be a huge improvement IMO.
I think it’s not often that one only needs a text to end the spanner, so
\startTextSpan \lyricmode { "" -- "back to normal" }
would be acceptable.

Drawback: it’s impossible to provide backward compatibility then, isn’t it?

But you were right and storing the default value in an extra variable 
solved the problem. I overlooked that I was introducing a recursion 
instead of redefining a variable. Thanks.

Yours, Simon