Re: Lyrics and Cosmetics

[Mats Bengtsson]

> 1.    I don't remember seeing anything about stanza numbering -- has it been
>       done yet?  (NB: I'm currently using numeric lyrics with no associated
>       note, and I have to use Cadenza to get rid of the bar lines)

A good place to look for different Lilypond features is the 
"Regression Test" document on the www page.
There, you can find one example of lyrics stanzas,
input/regression/lyrics-multi-stanza.ly
Here, the numbering is "Bert" and "Ernie", but you could also have
numbers, of course. See also the section on More Stanzas in the
reference manual.


> 2.    I'm wondering about aligning lyrics within a block.  As you can see
>       from Align.png, it has left-aligned the numbering (which is fine,
>       although it would be better right-aligned, for when you go from 9 to
>       10).  But then I want to be able to align the first words in the
>       stanza.  But not only that, I want the quotation marks and verse
>       numbers (verse numbers are the little ones, stanza numbers are the big
>       ones) to have a hanging indent (so in Align.png, 'M', 'T', 'F', and
>       'H' are left-aligned, with the quotes and numbers hanging over).
>       Anyway, I realise this is a special case, but I was wondering if there
>       was a general case, where people could mark it "left align at this
>       point in the syllable", and "right-align at this point in the
>       syllable".  Then in the "The" syllable, I could have
>       "$^2$``\leftalign The"
>       instead of
>       "$^2$``The"

Do you know about the Lilypond support for aligning lyrics according
to the punctuation? The only trick is that the name of the LyricsVoice 
contexts should begin with the name of the corresponding music Voice.
This is also described in the reference manual.

> 3.    In NotesClose.png, I'm sure you can see how close the notes are to the
>       bar line.

Which Lilypond version? I've got the impression this has improved
fairly recently.

> 4.    In TiesTouch.png, you can see the ties touching.  From observing a
>       similar case in my Psalm Book (which is easy to read; I don't know
>       whether it's right :) ), they have the ties a bit further out, and the
>       top one ends above the second note, while the bottom one ends below
>       the first.

This is all customizable, but the default values should be set
to provide a good result.

> 5.    With the snapping slurs to stem ends, I find that the main time I am
>       doing it is when I have eg. a8.( b16 )a4, or something similar, and it
>       goes from the stem of the a8. to the head of the a4.  Additionally I'm
>       pretty sure that all of the other cases where I did this, the slur
>       went in the opposite direction to the notes (ie. c4( )f4, with the
>       slur from the stem of the c to the head of the f).  Note the example I
>       just gave is untested, but I find it disconcerting when the slur goes
>       down, but the note goes up.  Anyway, if an exception or something were
>       made for my first example, that would cover 90% of the cases and I
>       would be happy.

Same as for the previous item. Do you have any suggestion for 
changed default values or do you request some additional intelligence
in Lilypond?

     /Mats