Re: fighting with lyrics

[address@hidden]

On Mar 20, 2011, at 8:11 PM, Benjamin Peterson wrote:

Hello,
Having used Lilypond successfully for some instrumental works, I'm typesetting a
song with it. Here's a link to the lilypond source:
http://paste.pocoo.org/show/356919/ Here's a image as it looks currently:
http://imgur.com/Afa3q

Two questions: How do I get the hyphens to show? Why does it look like the
lyrics are "lagging" behind the notes? Can I make them line up better?

Hey Ben,

This is not really a response to your question, but the two things you are pointing out are actually common behavior in typesetting:

1) In vocal scores, the hyphens between lyrics disappear when the spacing is tight.

2) The lagging you are taking about is also standard practice - I don't know of any publishers off the top of my head that left-justify their lyrics.

There are work-arounds to both questions you're asking, but before going down that road, check out scores on http://imslp.org/ and get acquainted with traditional typographical standards.  They have evolved over centuries facilitate reading and performance, and messing with them is generally an uphill battle.

Cheers,

MS