Re: unmetered music - page breaks and empty bar lines

[James Bailey]

On Jan 2, 2011, at 2:33 PM, Peter Van Kranenburg wrote:

> Dear list,
> 
> I'm typesetting unmetered music. My question is: what is the right (or best) 
> approach to do so?
> 
> If I set Score.timing to false, I have to insert \bar "" everywhere in order 
> to let lilypond figure out a nice layout. That's tedious.
> 
> My current approach is this:
> 
> ----
> \layout {
>  \context {
>       \Score
>       \remove "Bar_number_engraver"
>       \override BarLine #'transparent = ##t
>       \override TimeSignature #'transparent = ##t
>  }
>  \context {
>         \PianoStaff
>         \override SpanBar #'stencil =
>         #(lambda (grob)
>               (if (string=? (ly:grob-property grob 'glyph-name) "|")
>                       (set! (ly:grob-property grob 'glyph-name) ""))
>               (ly:span-bar::print grob))
>  }
> }
> ----
> 
> At the beginning of the music I do: \set Timing.defaultBarType = ""
> 
> So, I set the music with meter - providing lilypond many good points to 
> insert line breaks - and I make all barlines empty and hide the meter. The 
> problem is that the (empty) bar lines still occupy space, causing the notes 
> to be spaced unevenly (see attached example - the bottom part is where the 
> bar lines are when they are not empty. The space before the final note is 
> really bad).
> 
> I tried to set the next-note distance to 0 in the space-alist of barline, but 
> that didn't remove all horizontal space.
> 
> Is there a better way to do this?
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> Best,
> Peter van Kranenburg
Perhaps something like:
\version "2.12.3"
\layout {
   \context { \Score \remove Timing_translator \remove Bar_number_engraver }
   \context {
      \Staff
      \override BarLine #'stencil = ##f
      \override TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
   }
}
music = { \repeat unfold 64 { a4 a a a } }
\score { \music \layout {} }


Hope this helps,

James