Re: Chord name/Volta collision

[Mats Bengtsson]

I agree on the general problems of setting properties.
However, as you have noticed, LilyPond is extremely flexible
and it's virtually impossible to know what constructs to
include directly in the documentation. There was recently
some discussions on creating an FAQ list based on the questions
that appear on the mailing list (which really is the only way
to know what people try to do). The problem is that it requires
a fairly large effort to keep such a document up to date so we
need some voluntary maintainer.

I often refer to the Tips and Tricks document but also the
Regression Test document. I hope you have realized that these
two documents simply collect the example files found in
/usr/share/doc/lilypond-*/input/test/ and .../regression,
respectively. I often use 'grep' in these directories when
searching for an answer to some question.

If you get stuck, don't hesitate to send a question to the mailing
list. At the moment, Han-Wen, one of the main authors, is on a long
vacation and Jan, the other main author, seems to be busy with his
work but I and several others on the list try to answer the questions
that appear.

Which brings us to your specific question wich I don't fully understand·
Could you please elaborate on what other settings you already have
used to move around things and why you wanted to set the direction?
As far as I can understand, the direction-source property is used
internally in LilyPond when it builds up a hierarchy of objects
to be printed. The value should be an object instance, so it's hard
to set it as an ordinary user.

If you just want to move volta bracket higher up, I recommend to use
the padding property.

   /Mats


Walter Hofmeister wrote:
> Hello all,  
>     I have typeset a piece that involves a melody with chord names above. I
> have had problems with getting things to look good. At first the chord names
> would appear above the alternative ending brackets. I have managed to get
> the chord names lowered so that they are now under the brackets but now the
> number belonging to the alternative bracket clashes with the chord name. I
> have tried setting "direction", "side-relative-direction", and
> "direction-source". But have not been able to produce the correct results.
>
> When setting "direction-source" the line of code I used was:
> \property Staff.VoltaBracket \set #'direction-source = #'ChordName
> This produced the error:
> Type check for `direction-source' failed; value `ChordName' must be of type
> `grob (GRaphical OBject)' when compiling.
> Can someone tell me what was wrong with the line of code?
>     I am getting increasingly frustrated with my attempts at tweaking output
> of Lilypond. I can see that there is huge flexibility and power here but
> producing the results one desires is VERY difficult. The documentation lists
> huge amounts of information as to what graphic objects are related and what
> properties they accept, but most of these properties are unset and there are
> no examples of the line of code that applies to that property. I realize
> that there is much repetition in the kind of arguments that setting these
> properties accept, but while looking through the documentation I see many
> other descriptions that have been repeated many times for different objects.
>     The Tips and Tricks document has been quoted as having set many
> properties, but in order to see how it was done you have to load the
> specific .ly file into an editor and examine the file. I also have not found
> references to things that one might commonly set like: if you would like to
> change the space between the clef and the key signature, do this.
>     To set the space between the staff and chord names, I had to send a note
> to this list which produced no solution (hey I know this can happen and am
> not blaming anybody), and search the archives which also did not produce a
> solution. I arrived at the solution indirectly by searching the archives for
> a solution on how to change the height of the Volta Brackets. This all took
> considerable time for something that I would have thought should be an easy
> thing to set.
>     I have spent many hours reading through documentation for Lilypond that
> gives me the feeling of going around in circles. Sorry for the rant but from
> my point of view these are issues that will need to be dealt with in order
> for Lilypond's userbase to increase. I suspect that there are many people
> who have installed Lilypond and have given up on it because of these issues.
> I for one will try to improve my command of Lilypond, but these frustrations
> are real for me.
>
> Walter Hofmeister
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lilypond-user mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user

--
=============================================
        Mats Bengtsson
        Signal Processing
        Signals, Sensors and Systems
        Royal Institute of Technology
        SE-100 44  STOCKHOLM
        Sweden
        Phone: (+46) 8 790 8463                         
        Fax:   (+46) 8 790 7260
        Email: address@hidden
        WWW: http://www.s3.kth.se/~mabe
=============================================