Re: brainstorming a really smart system engraver

[Keith OHara]

Kieren MacMillan <kieren_macmillan <at> sympatico.ca> writes:

> [...] there are sections where a score COULD be adequately 
> represented using only 1 choral staff, and other sections that require
> 2 or 3 or 4 (or even more) independent staves.

> I think I have the PERFECT solution to this problem, 
> if only \quoteDuring did the following two things:
>    1. Quoted lyrics.

It does quote lyrics for me. 
(It starts an empty staff but RemoveEmptyStaves cleans that up.)

A = \lyricmode{la di da di }
\addQuote "lyric" \A
<< \new Staff \new Voice = "a" {c'4 d' e' f'}
   \new Lyrics \lyricmode { \lyricsto "a" \quoteDuring "lyric"  \skip 1 }  >>

>    2. Observed \RemoveEmptyStaves as if the quoted portion was empty
> (i.e., if the quoted material did NOT stop a hara-kiri action).
>

I don't think LilyPond remembers which items came from quoteDuring at the stage 
when removeEmptyStaves happens, but you can tell her for what periods in time 
she should consider some notes, or lyrics, unworthy of their own staff, or 
line. 
See this recent thread
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2012-12/msg00458.html>
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2012-12/msg00061.html>