Re: Line-width and Lilypond-book

[Kevin Barry]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 2:34 PM, Jayaratna <address@hidden> wrote:

I'd simply like it to be as large as the textwidth. I have had a good result
by manually inserting a slightly shorter line-width (2mm less than the
textwidth) in the paper block.

There is currently no way to fix the width of a lilypond score: lilypond considers a `line' to begin with the line that starts a system, so anything that is to the /left/ of that, such as the system start bracket, the instrument name, or bar numbers will make the actual line-width longer than you have specified. Fixing the paper width doesn't solve the problem either: if the left margin and indent are both 0, lilypond will put stuff off the page to the left (or, in the case of eps-backend images, make the image wider than the paper=width).

The workaround I use is either to use a shorter line-width (or paper-width), or to add a little left-margin, but the value you need to use varies depending on the staff-size and on what lies outside of it, so you just have to experiment every time and check how wide the images are. It's tedious, and also the reason I stopped using lilypond-book (now I just create the score images separately and include them manually).

I don't know if this is considered a bug (but I think it should be, or at least a much-needed enhancement). As an example, consider the following minimal example:

\version "2.18.2"

\paper {

  left-margin = 0

  indent = 0

}

\new Staff \with { instrumentName = "CAN'T SEE ME" } {

  c

}

hth,

Kevin