As you all well know, I love Lilypond… to the depths of her convoluted code.
There are very few out there who are pushing her farther, or promoting her more enthusiastically, than I.
But this screenshot is a perfect example of how she drives me crazy sometimes:
All we would need — as I’ve suggested many times in the past — is a setting which said “this grob can move left/right/up/down to avoid collisions” (with, in a perfect world, a maximum amount of offset in either staff spaces or moments), and the situation seen here could be resolved automatically. I would say that the character indication is allowed to move left+right+up+down, the dynamics is allowed to move up+down, and the rehearsal mark is allowed to move up+down; then Lily would know to push “+Jack:” back to the left a bit, which would allow the dynamics and mark to drop into that huge gap below them.
I certainly realise this would add some time to the spacing engine’s work — but the decision-making algorithm should only engage when collisions are detected, so it’s not like every single grob would be involved on every single pass.
<le sigh>
Kieren.