Re: Possible bug in lyrics mode

[Arle Lommel]

I’ve gone ahead and submitted the lyric mode spacing issue to the gmane lilypond bugs list. This is the first time I've submitted a bug and as I look at the other postings, so I'll ask here if I need to do anything beyond posting it there to get the bug actually listed?

For what it's worth, I've created a more compact example (still fairly large since I need to show multiple lines) and compared it with ideal output:

This graphic shows just how bad the problem can be. At the font size output by Lilypond, the ideal minimum distance between baselines of the text should be somewhere around 14.7 pt (as shown at right, which is what the output should look like, more or less). In some cases, however, the actual line spacing is less than half what the minimum should be and even at its greatest value it achieves effectively negative leading (if the distance between baselines is less than the font size the leading is essentially negative). From a typographical standpoint this is absolutely terrible and from a performance standpoint it renders the lyrics text unreadable.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to get an acceptable output without resorting to kludges like the following where minimum-distance needs to be set by trial and error to get something even close to right?

\override VerticalAxisGroup #'inter-loose-line-spacing = #'((space . 1) (padding . 1) (minimum-distance . 4) (stretchability . 1))

(Also, in my trials I never found that any of the values besides minimum-distance seemed to actually do anything at all. Maybe I just don't understand them.)

(For me, obviously getting a bug fix is the way to go, but I'm going to guess that this will not get high priority since it doesn't deal with notation. I hope I'm wrong though.)

Best,

Arle

I include the minimal example used to generate the examples above:

\version "2.13.28"
\header {
title = "Some really bad spacing"
}

\paper{ ragged-right=##t }

melody = \relative a' {
\key c \dorian
\time 4/4
\clef treble

c4 bes8 g8 c8 bes8 g4 |
}

verseA = { \lyricmode { This texty has de -- scend -- ers } }
verseB = { \lyricmode { This text has none at all } }
verseC = { \lyricmode { aces are cans. axes are caves } }
verseD = { \lyricmode { so are cons, ox -- en zero } }
verseE = { \lyricmode { AND NOW I AM SHOUT -- ING } }

\score {
<<
\new Voice = "melody" { \melody }
\new Lyrics \lyricsto "melody" \verseA
\new Lyrics \lyricsto "melody" \verseB
\new Lyrics \lyricsto "melody" \verseC
\new Lyrics \lyricsto "melody" \verseD
\new Lyrics \lyricsto "melody" \verseE
>>
}

\layout {
  \context {
    \Lyrics
  }
}