address@hidden: Re: Better vertical spacing in 2.11 adversely affects lyric spacing]

[Monk Panteleimon]

On Tue, Oct 30, 2007 at 12:25:45PM +1100, Joe Neeman wrote:
> On 10/30/07, Monk Panteleimon <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Lyrics should be equidistant from higher and lower staves, right?
> 
> I'm not sure -- I wrote the code but I don't usually use lyrics. It
> was suggested to me (I can't find the email) that lyrics should stay
> close to the staff to which they are attached. 

That is generally true, but the reasoning defeats itself in any
homorhythmic choral score.
The lyrics are "attached" to *all* the voices, from the lowest to
highest. The bass has to read the same words as the soprano.
With this sort of spacing, if the tenor gets into the ledger lines, it
will become necessary to reprint the lyrics just so that the bass can
read them.
It also just looks wierd.... The system (words included) is a unit ... 
so why all the white space right in the middle? It starts competing with
between-system-space, and this gets confusing.

I redid my example file to make the problem more obvious.
Same url:
http://www.tcgalaska.com/kliros/2.11LyricSpacing.ly
My real-music examples look worse than this, since more space is
added, apparently, for the slurs and for higher notes in the \voiceOne
of the lower staff.
Please note that the systems on the *second* page look fine, like in
2.10.

>So when lilypond
> stretches the systems (to better fill the page) it leaves the lyrics
> close to the staff above. 

Sorry, but even when explained that way it just looks bad.
One wonders what all that space is doing there. I'd like to hear the opinions 
on this of people who use lyrics in polyphonic music (each voice with its own 
staff) 
or individual vocal parts within an instrumental score. I suspect that they 
will correspond with my own, even without everyone singing the same
words at the same rhythm.

I even tried compiling a single-line melody-only type chant with 2.11,
and I found that here also the spacing is adverserly affected. It's good
to have the lyrics that close to a single staff (although I didn't think
they were far enough to be a problem, or even to think about it) but the 
general 
spacing of the systems doesn't seem improved when you look at the whole
thing, lyrics included. I would end up overriding the pageBreak, or I
I would try to add space around the header somehow to push the system to
the next page.

In the status-quo lilypond horizontal lyric-spacing (which is excellent)
the extra space
derived from having fewer systems on a page seems to be divided between
the height of each system and the distance between them. The lyrics
remain spaced evenly between staves as before the extra space appeared.
Please, please leave it that way if possible. It works so well as it is.

>This is described, along with the relevant
> overrides, in the 2.11 manual (the section on vertical spacing).

Thank you. I'll check that out.
All the other new stuff looks great, especially the top-level
\pageBreak.
Right on. Thanks for all your work, and pardon my long-windedness.

PS.
Incidentally, the associatedVoice concept, while useful for aligning
melismata, is also the source of a few other glitches with lilypond lyrics.
I'd like to offer my general observations in hope of helping the
developers, but I'll save it for another email.

-- 
Monk Panteleimon
Hermitage of the Holy Cross
Wayne, WV, USA
address@hidden

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----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Monk Panteleimon
Hermitage of the Holy Cross
Wayne, WV, USA
address@hidden

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 IC + XC
+ + + + +
 NI + KA
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