Re: \lyrics, was Re: Vertical spacing of figured bass

[David Wright]

On Sun 05 Nov 2017 at 22:31:01 (+0100), Noeck wrote:
> Hi David (W.),
> 
> > I don't have enough background information to know whether the
> > introduction of "\lyrics" was to improve consistency with its
> > friends, or just for brevity (popular in the unix world).
> > Yesterday I was leaning to the latter, in which case one could
> > imagine contractions like "\new Voice" → "\voice".
> 
> As you wrote yourself below, these shorthands are for places where you
> would have to specify both a new context and an entry mode otherwise:
> 
> \new ChordNames \chordmode { … }    ->  \chords
> \new DrumVoice \drummode { … }      ->  \drums
> \new FiguredBass \figuremode { … }  ->  \figures
> \new Lyrics \lyricmode { … }        ->  \lyrics
> 
> For normal music you don't need to specify the input mode (\notemode)
> and the staff is created automatically. So in some way
> \new Staff \notemode { … }   has the shorthand  { … }.
> 
> > However, after stumbling on NR p589, I see that this change
> > is being, or has been, applied only to mode-specifying commands
> > so it wouldn't affect the commands alluded to above.
> 
> Yes.

Thanks for all the replies, and to Simon for the reference; I'd
never looked through the Administrative Policies.

BTW it's perhaps less of a surprise that \lyrics is new to me because
I ran grep \new Lyrics \lyricmode over my sources and the only hits
were MIDI imports from rosegarden and MWEs from here. All my own
lyrics are contained in simple variables with a mode but no context.

> PS: If one alreay understood the different modes and contexts, this
> cheatsheet might help to remember them:
> http://joramberger.de/files/lilypond_sheet_2.18_en.pdf (on the right on
> the same line as the captions).

That's great; I've added it to your other cribs: the visual index and
the spacing.

Cheers,
David.