Re: vowel aligned lyrics - want to improve it

[Carl Sorensen]

On 2/15/10 8:16 AM, "Wolf Alight" <address@hidden> wrote:

> Hi Lilyponders 
> 
> I just wanted to improve the vowel alignment of the lyrics and a few days
> later I find myself diving deep into the Lilypond with fascination
> and...yes...some frustration. 
> 
> I want to improve the fine code by Carl Sorensen:
> 
> http://old.nabble.com/Re:-Lyrics---align-first-wowel-of-a-syllable-under-the-n
> otehead----SUCCESS-td21720060.html
>  
> which only works for fonts with the same width. With arial for example the
> alignment for "Mali" comes way off since the M is much wider than the l and
> the i.  
> 
> All (I think) I need help with is to obtain the width of each letter, the rest
> I could probably do myself. 
> 
> I know how to get an elements 'text but not how to get its X-extent (if that
> is what I should use).   
> 
> Does anyone have a clue? Is it even possible to obtain the width of a lyrics
> element from within an \include file?

You could do interpret-markup and get a stencil of an individual character,
then get its X-extent, I think.  It would involve getting the 'text, then
going through the text elements one by one and creating a stencil.

Hope this is helpful,

Carl