Re: Instrument names and smallest possible bounding box

[Malte Meyn]

Am 17.01.2016 um 12:10 schrieb Carl-Henrik Buschmann:
> 
> 1) Instrument names.
> 
> The default placement of instrument names seems a bit messy compared to my 
> default Sibelius output:
> 
> 
> Lilypond:
> They seem "off", not alligned properly. This is of course the fault of the 
> author. Most likely there is a easy fix. Suggestions?

LilyPond tries to center-align the instrument names. Long names which
don’t fit into the margin defined by indent (default 1.5cm (?)) are
right-aligned (“Woodwind” in your example). This “mixing” behaviour
looks odd, I agree. You can make the indent bigger so all names are
center-aligned or change the alignment of instrument names globally;
here are both solutions (they also can be combined):

%%%%%%%%
\version "2.19.35"

\paper {
  %indent = 1.8\cm % short center-aligned (in this margin), long right
  %indent = 3.5\cm % both center-aligned
}

%{
\layout {
  \context {
    \Staff
    \override InstrumentName.self-alignment-X = #RIGHT
  }
}
%}

<<
  \new Staff \with {
    instrumentName = "very long name"
  } { R1 \break R1 }
  \new Staff \with {
    instrumentName = "short"
  } { R1 \break R1 }
>>
%%%%%%%%

> 
> 2) I need to export pngs for my latex documents and i would like the bounding 
> box to be as small as possible. How do i do this?
> 

There is a lilypond option -dpreview which does this iirc. And apart
from that: Do you know lilypond-book?