Re: HaraKiriStaffContext for French? style orchestral parts

[Paul Scott]

Graham Percival wrote:

> > these parts.  This may be fine for a keyboard player but for a single 
> > line player it's often very hard to read.
> >    
> Not too often (I'm a string player, not wind).  If there's a lot of divisi
> stuff, it normally splits into two staffs.  I don't find it hard to read,
> but I've been training for decades.  :)
>
> I certainly sympathize with your desire to make the music as easy as possible
> to read.
That certainly is a main point.  It's not that I can't read the other 
one line divisi stuff.  I've been playing for almost 5 decades :)

> > relevant) staves if they are playing different notes and one staff when 
> > they are playing the same notes.
> >    
>
> That description reminds me of something like \partcombine.  I don't know
> exactly what, or how, it's used, but IIRC Lilypond has some way of combining
> two voices (in the same staff) in the manner you describe.  That's why I
> suggested using two voices and telling your players to "get used to it".  :)
I guess it's enough that what I want is used often enough:  Bolero, 
Afternoon of a Faun, etc. and it should be easy to reproduce that.

> The problem with using hanging staffs for that kind of stuff is that you need
> to specify it all manually.  If you used \partcombine, you could just write
> each part on its own, and the Lilypond would automatically figure out what
> parts need to be written seperately and which parts can be printed together.
>
> If you program a bit, you might be able to hack \partcombine or make a new
> fuction that works on multiple staffs.
I just looked that up and I consider it fine for scores but not as good 
for parts.

> > As a programmer HaraKiri seems to be the perfect mechanism.  It would 
> > only require that the algorithm would display one staff of rests if 
> > there were notes in all of the parts.
> >    
>
> Sorry, I don't completely understand this part.
Because HaraKiri is an automatic way to get the correct number of staves 
except for the problem of the rests.  Actually I still have to cheat a 
little and place rests in the other voices.  So this actually suggests a 
new mechanism which might be derived from the HaraKiri and \partcombine 
code.

Another basic part I didn't mention even though I used it in my example 
is the role 'global' plays here.  This is another reason for needing 
HaraKiri or some new derivative.  This then takes us to the whole part 
extraction question and how to get markings (tempo markings, etc.) to 
appear at the top of the score and in the individual parts.  This has 
been discussed here but I haven't seen a really magical solution.  Maybe 
this can lead to us discovering an already existing or a new solution to 
these related questions.

Have fun,

Paul