Re: Center Lyric Syllables (ignoring punctuation)

[Alexander Kobel]

On 01/08/2014 04:10 AM, Alex Loomis wrote:
> Shouldn't this be the default output? Looking at hand-engraved examples,
> such as this lied
> <http://javanese.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/1/18/IMSLP16170-SchubertD489_Der_Wanderer_1st_version_called_Der_Ungluckliche.pdf>,
> words tend to be centered ignoring punctuation (measures 8 and 14), or
> further right than they would be if centered (measure 10). Currently the
> default seems to be the reverse.

Hi Alex,

the positioning in the linked example is somewhat arbitrary. Which I 
consider a good thing, stemming from old-school craftsmanship - it's 
carefully chosen not to waste space, and still to be as readable as 
possible. I /think/ it shows a slight preference for having the vowel of 
the syllable close to the notehead, if space allows, but I may be 
mistaken. This approach is actually on Janek's never-ending to-do list, 
and I believe it will be even better than the output you achieve with 
this snippet.
For the time being, I tend to agree; I cannot imagine a situation where 
using this approach degrades the output, and it's among my default 
includes. On the other hand, AFAIU the decision what is or isn't 
punctuation is not universal over all languages, and having it as 
default might make tweaking the output slightly more complicated...


Best,
Alexander