Re: lyrics and \skip

[Mats Bengtsson]

Arjan Bos wrote:
> The solution proposed by Mats still completely eludes me. It does 
> something with the difference between \new lyrics and \context lyrics 
> and the differences are still not clear to me, even after using 
> lilypond for more than 2 years.
The idea is very simple

\new Lyrics = "mainlyrics" \lyricsto "melody" ...

creates a new lyrics context (think of it as a line of lyrics or a 
verse) with a specified
name "mainlyrics".

\context Lyrics = "mainlyrics" \lyricsto "verse" ...

does not create a new context (i.e. a new line of lyrics). Rather, since a
Lyrics context name "mainlyrics" already exists, it tells LilyPond to put
the lyrics into this already existing context, which in practice means that
the words will end up on the same line.

> The solution I have is very simple. I just insert the following in 
> every .ly file and use some binary counting for my skips.
> skipOne = \lyricmode { \skip 1 }
> skipTwo = \lyricmode { \skipOne \skipOne }
> skipFour = \lyricmode { \skipTwo \skipTwo }
> skipSix = \lyricmode { \skipTwo \skipFour }
> skipEight = \lyricmode {\skipFour \skipFour }
> skipSixteen = \lyricmode {\skipEight \skipEight}
> skipThirtytwo = \lyricmode {\skipSixteen \skipSixteen }
>
> And if I then need a \skip 1 * 40  I simply insert a \skipThritytwo 
> \skipEight into my lyrics.

A much simpler version of this was proposed in an earlier email in this 
thread:
\repeat unfold 40 {\skip 1}

However, one you learn to work with named contexts, I definitely 
recommend to
use that principle instead.

  /Mats