Re: Back in the Pond

[Alexander Kobel]

Hi (almost) everybory (dropping -user)!

On 2017-01-20 10:20, Knut Petersen wrote:
> Hi everybody!
> 
>>> +1.  A personal wish: I think that \lyricsto ChoirStaff = "ctx" {
>>> ... } has the potential to be a killer feature w.r.t. usability for
>>> choir literature (especially combined with the upcoming automatic
>>> extenders). Unfortunately, assignment of lyrics to *container*
>>> contexts does not work (at least, not reliably), and extender
>>> generation is completely defunct.
>> Uh, I thought that people replaced extenders right now?
> Well, may I cite the notation manual:
> 
>     "extender lines cannot be drawn when there is no associated voice."
> 
> The autoextender patch only adds extenders at places where extenders can be 
> added without it.

Good catch. From what I spotted, the missing piece is indeed the association 
between lyrics and voices. Note that it's not just extenders that are broken: 
I'm not entirely confident whether the lyrics placement is what it is supposed 
to be, in case there are different rhythms within a container context and 
outside. At least IIUC the searchForVoice and associatedVoice{,Type,Context} 
properties.

As soon as there is an associated voice (e.g., through the searchForVoice 
algorithm), extenders /are/ drawn. The problem with that approach: AFAICS it is 
not possible to restrict the search to a certain context. E.g., for 
ChoirStaves, you'd only want the search to extend to Voices that are 
(currently) printed on some Staff that is part of the ChoirStaff.
For scores that only consist of one ChoirStaff, the workaround I gave in the 
other thread actually works.

IIUC, the melisma translator you are talking about would ensure that moments 
are skipped where all candidate associated voices have melisma_busy? That's 
another useful feature, obviously, but AFAICS the lyric-voice-correspondence 
should be somewhat independent.
Anyway, I'll stop handwaving and speculating here without a good cause. If you 
want me to proceed, you know where to find me...

> Prior to Alexanders bugreport I wasn't even aware that something like 
> \lyricsto ChoirStaff ... could work.
> If we get it to work it might be a good idea to document the feature in the 
> notation manual.

Yes. In fact, Trevor already mentioned that he will at least modify the SATB 
template to use that feature and document it there. But obviously, once 
everything is reliable, NR 2.1.2 "Polyphony with shared lyrics" could be 
simplified drastically, with the current docs merely an emergency or special 
purpose option...

>>> I reported that in a thread from 2016-12-26 on bug-lilypond, but could
>>> not motivate any supporters yet.
> 
> I verified that the changes made by the autoextender patch are unrelated
> but decided that probably the person who added the feature is the most
> obvious candidate to fix it ;-)

To make sure: this wasn't a complaint about lack of interest from my side. And 
yes, I also double-checked that the auto extenders aren't the culprit...

> Currently I work on  LyricHyphen enhancements. After I know if the 
> autoextender
> patch will be accepted I'll send a patch that will implement the following 
> features: [...]

Whoo! Nice!


Cheers,
Alexander