Re: outside of the staff stuff

[Joe Neeman]

On 12/13/06, Luc <address@hidden> wrote:
>  Sorry if I was not accurate in my report! Maybe this has to do with the
> complexity of the topic. But I'll try to break down all the points:
>
> 1. {c'\ d'\sf}
> Here I would expect both articulations to have the same vertical distance
> either from the notehead or from the staffline. In the example above the
> "sf" of the note "d" is lower than the "p" of the note "c".

LilyPond doesn't align dynamic texts; I'm pretty sure this isn't related to
the new vertical placement stuff. You can find more information in the
mailing list archives (although I don't remember which list).

2. { c'\p d'\sf e'\pp }
> Adding a 3rd note with articulation the new strategy takes effect and the
> "pp" is moved down to avoid colliding with the preceding "sf".

In order to get this to work as you described, I had to change \pp to \ppp
(and similarly for the following examples).

3. { c'\p d'\sf e'\pp f'\sf}
> Adding a 4th note with an articulation I do not understand, why this
> articulation has to be lowered again - there is plenty of space above and no
> collision is to be expected there.

This is a situation where the algorithm isn't optimal. The workaround is to
do \once \override DynamicLineSpanner #'outside-staff-priority = #1 before
the final \sf. I'll work on this but I don't know how easy it is so it might
take a while.

Now coming to \fatText: As I remember from the documentation, the purpose of
> \fatText is to assure that a long text can be written in its full length -
> following musical events wil be pushed to the right until the text is done.
> This obviously interferes with the new strategy!
>
> 4. { \fatText c'\p d'\sf e'\pp f'\sf}
> This yields the same result as example 3.

If you look at the definition of fatText (in ly/property-init.ly), you'll
see it's just a shortcut for "\override TextScript #'no-spacing-rods = ##f".
That is, it only applies to TextScripts, not DynamicTexts! If you put
"\override DynamicText #'no-spacing-rods = ##f" instead of \fatText, you'll
get something closer to what you want. You won't get exactly what you want
because there is a bug in the vertical placement. But this will be fixed
very soon.

I hope that helps a bit. We are currently working on a new page for the
manual that will have more information on this feature and how to tweak it.