Re: Clarifying the 'padding alist-key

[Mark Polesky]

Mark Polesky wrote:
> 1)
> padding - the minimum required amount of vertical
> whitespace between two items, measured in staff-spaces.
> When available, skylines are used in the spacing
> calculation.
>
> 2)
> padding - the minimum required amount of vertical
> whitespace between the skylines of two items, measured in
> staff-spaces.

Trevor Daniels wrote:
>> Interesting.  I just assumed you'd both prefer #1,
>> because IIUC most items don't have skylines for padding.
>> For example, do things like title/toplevel markups,
>> lyrics, etc.  have skylines?  If not, I think the
>> wording of #1 is more accurate.
>
> Well, it depends on how "skylines" is defined.  If it's
> defined as a horizontal line at the extreme values of Y
> for title, toplevel markups, lyrics, etc the second
> wording is OK.
>
>> ...skylines are not explained anywhere in the docs.
>
> So we have free rein to describe it how we like :)

Well, we shouldn't be too cavalier about it.  Personally, I
would define skylines according to their usage in the
program.  For padding purposes, the alternative to a skyline
is a "bounding box", so maybe I should incorporate that term
into description #1.  I'd feel more comfortable with that.

Feel free to add a skyline explanation somewhere; I'll add a
@ref pointing to it.

Thanks.
- Mark