Learn from Finale 2014 (seriously)?

[Urs Liska]

Hi all,

this has just appeared:
http://www.finalemusic.com/blog/quick-peeks-at-finale-2014-consolidate-rests/

and I think what they describe as inferior behaviour in Finale 2012 is (nearly) exactly what we have to do (OK, we don't have to manually drag rests to an appropriate place but let LilyPond do this with \oneVoice.

But I often have to do things like

<<
  {
    \voiceOne d'4 \oneVoice r \voiceOne d'
  }
  \new Voice {
    \voiceTwo d4 s d
  }
>>

which really is equivalent to the initial example of the Finale post.

Does anybody have an idea how one could improve this situation for LilyPond?

A rather simple approach would be a function that applies the \oneVoice either once or for the content of a passed music _expression_ and restores the \voiceXXX afterwards.

More elegant in use would be something that checks for any rest if there is a rest of the same length at the same position in time and them performs such a merge automatically.
Something similar to \mergeDifferentlyHeadedOn.
I don't have the slightest idea how to realize this, but it may trigger a challenge here?

Best
Urs