Using \partcombine and \lyricsto

[Bret Whissel]

Hi, list.  I'm working on tweaking \partcombine so that it can be used
with \lyricsto for the purpose of typesetting hymns more easily.  The
problem is that after \partcombine, the melody line (to which a lyric
should be set) may be split between three (more?) separate voice
contexts.  Re-setting associatedVoice does not work 100% of the time,
owing to the fact that one must re-set the property one syllable ahead
of time.  (This is clumsy even when not using \partcombine, and someday
I'll have stared at the parser long enough to figure out how to fix
this.)

The following describes one solution that I'm testing.  I've modified
part-combine-iterator so that each voice context switch records in staff
properties what the currently active voice is for both parts.  E.g., if
both parts are merged, staff property activeVoicePartOne and
activeVoicePartTwo both get set to "shared".  Likewise, if stemming is
split, the activeVoicePartOne gets set to "one", and activeVoicePartTwo
gets set to "two", and so on.  The staff on which \partcombine operates
should be named.

The next step is to modify new-lyric-combine-music-iterator by changing
find_voice().  The semantics here are modified so that failure to find
the named voice context (from \lyricsto) results in a search for the
named staff context.  If the named staff context is found, then
find_voice() will subsequently look up the activeVoicePartOne or
activeVoicePartTwo property to find which voice should be set next.

The input file would look something like this:

  \score {
    <<
      \context Staff = "treble" {
        \partcombine \soprano \alto
      }
      \lyricsto "treble.1" \new Lyrics \verseOne
      \lyricsto "treble.1" \new Lyrics \verseTwo
      \new Staff {
        \partcombine \tenor \bass
      }
  }

This will set lyrics to the "soprano" voice, while specifying "treble.2"
would set lyrics to the alto voice.

I'm by no means suggesting that this is an efficient solution (I rather
doubt it), but I'm still trying to figure out the structures and
interfaces between C++ and Scheme without breaking existing
functionality.  (For hymn-writing purposes, I've also had to tweak some
other aspects of \partcombine, for example, unisons should have two
stems while unison rests should usually be merged, and the chord
interval was expanded to a twelfth rather than just an octave.)

Does anyone have any comments or ideas for better approaches?  I'm
particularly concerned about tossing in a named staff instead of a named
voice for \lyricsto.  Is there a better way to specify this
syntactically?

Thanks,
Bret

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