Re: invisible note for expressive marks

[David Wright]

On Sun 29 May 2016 at 11:00:11 (+0200), David Kastrup wrote:
> Thomas Morley <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> >> \version "2.19.40"
> >> {
> >>   <> \p \< \repeat unfold 3 {c' d' e' f'} <> \!
> >> }
> >> \addlyrics { \repeat unfold 3 { c d e f } }
> >>
> >> {
> >>   s1*0 \p \< \repeat unfold 3 {c'4 d' e' f'} s1*0 \!
> >> }
> >> \addlyrics { \repeat unfold 3 { c d e f } }
> >>
> >>
> >> Can you figure out what's going wrong with the second example?
> >
> >
> > Honestly, I've not the slightest idea ...
> 
> Does it help if I write the last line explicitly as
> 
> \addlyrics { \repeat unfold 3 { c1*0 d1*0 e1*0 f1*0 } }
> 
> ?
> 
> Since all lyrics happen at once, \addlyrics has no way to adjust the
> timing.  Now to be honest I'm fuzzy why we don't even get a single lyric
> but the rest can be explained by having set the default input duration
> with s1*0 .

I don't think I've seen what looks like a music expression used as
lyrics before now, and had thought LP might complain about
encountering a note name here, but not so.

I played about with some small examples and noticed that LP stores the
first lyric text encountered ("c" above) but then consumes and throws
away any more lyrics for the same moment (I'll call this "hunting
mode") until it finds a lyric with a non-zero duration. At this point,
LP still throws away this lyric text but hangs onto its duration so
that it knows where the next lyric (which it will treat normally) will
be applied.

So the lack of any printed lyric in your example appears to be because
LP does not treat running off the end of \addlyrics in "hunting" mode
the same way as finding a lyric with a non-zero duration (or running
off the end when not in hunting mode, or processing "normal" lyrics).

If \addlyrics finishes with a non-zero duration lyric, that's enough
to allow it to print the "c", though the final lyric text is still
tossed away.

All holiday speculation!

Cheers,
David.