Re: Bug in lyrics placement in mensural music?

[David Kastrup]

"Trevor Daniels" <address@hidden> writes:

> Phil Holmes wrote Friday, September 28, 2012 9:40 AM
>
>>> Phil Holmes wrote Thursday, September 27, 2012 5:02 PM
>>>
>>>> The code below produces the image attached.  As can be seen, using a
>>>> StaffGroup with mensural staves places the lyrics above the top stave, 
>>>> and I
>>>> can't find an over-ride that gets them in the proper place.  I _think_ 
>>>> this
>>>> must be a bug, but wondering if anyone knows better?
>>>
>>> No, it's not a bug.  The problem is not with the lyrics but with
>>> MensuralStaff, which is not accepted by StaffGroup, so they
>>> both get pushed to the bottom.
>> 
>> Thanks, Trevor.  The answer begs the question that it would appear 
>> deliberate that this works wrongly, but it still seems to work wrongly by 
>> default.  It would seem that a StaffGroup _should_ accept a MensuralStaff by 
>> default?
>
> That depends on whether the system start brace provided by StaffGroup
> is used in mensural music.

I am not sure about that.  Unless the current behavior is _advantageous_
in some situations, there is little point in retaining it.

> I know nothing about ancient music so I've no idea whether this is the
> case or not.

It is not uncommon for music to "mix and match" styles.  Granted, this
is more the case for Gregorian chant where the notation is not just
visually distinct (which is mostly the case for mensural) but rather
quite different.  But for things like incipits and similar, the
combination is not unthinkable either.

So we should focus on the question "is there a conceivable reason where
the current behavior is actually desirable for more than `user
educational' reasons?".  If the answer is "no", it seems like we have
nothing to gain from keeping it.

-- 
David Kastrup