Re: \fill-line while respecting natural widths

[Alexander Kobel]

On 02/08/2014 11:22 PM, Kieren MacMillan wrote:
> Hi David,
>
> > Hmm--do you think it should be added as an option to \fill-line?
>
> DEFINITELY!
> As just one example: I’m going to use it in the musical theatre scores I’m 
> engraving right now, to [evenly] space two columns of dialogue above a system 
> of underscore music.
>
> But maybe it should be its own separate function, e.g., \spaced-line, or some 
> such thing?

Agreed.  What about \equispaced-line?

The rationale for \fill-line IMHO is only to be used for one, two or 
three arguments, which is the common case in headings.  One for 
center-aligned (which should be available as \center-line on it's 
own...), two for left-right-aligned, three for 
left-center-right-aligned.  That's it.  Everything else gives highly 
unintuitive results.  It's the analogue of one of the rare features I 
miss in OpenOffice vs. Word:  In the latter, you can specify the 
horizontal alignment for groups of words in a single line, separated by 
tabs.
\fill-line might not be the best name for that, but it's late to change 
it.  (\equicentered-line?  Leftmost and rightmost element don't fit in, 
though...)  And it's description is really bad, now that I read it again...
BTW, I'd like to see collision avoidance there (and there should be a 
comment in the code on what's necessary), but probably it's overkill for 
what it's used for.

On the other hand, especially for two-column-dialogues or verses, I 
always end up to use manually spaced columns:  I want a consistent 
column separation, I (usually) want columns of consistent width, and I 
(usually) want the columns to start at the same horizontal position.  At 
least if you have several of those places.  Then, it's almost no 
difference whether you use \spaced-line (\equispaced-line?) or simply a 
\fill-line (as \center-line) of $stuff to autocalculate left and right 
margin.


Best,
Alexander