LilyIssues / Issues / #2459 Vertical positioning of Lyrics, Dynamics etc.

Google Importer - 2012-03-31

Originally posted by: PhilEHol...@googlemail.com

A couple of comments. 1) Just because you can find examples of bad practice in old scores doesn't make it good practice. We could also institute a rule that dots should be omitted when it's easier to do than include them. I can point you to lots of examples of commercial scores where this happens. 2) This change would break Elaine Gould's rule: page 439 "The line of text should be parallel to the stave for the length of the system, and not be placed on different levels to accommodate notes below the stave." Stone and Gardner-Read do not mention this, but do not use different lines in their examples.

Summary: Vertical positioning of Lyrics, Dynamics etc. - breaking into segments

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Google Importer - 2012-03-31

Originally posted by: janek.li...@gmail.com

I agree that providing examples of some practice doesn't mean it's necessarily a good practice.
However, i also think that having an authority say something doesn't make it always true. Indeed, most of the scores place all Lyrics on one level; however, i think it's (at least partly) a historical and technological issue - often the text was typeset in a separate process, and because of that it had to be on one level. Everyone got used to it and few tried to change this; things like that happen very often - just look at loads of scores with BarLines spanning whole ChoirStaffs unnecessarily.
I wouldn't be surprised if apprentice engravers were told "place lyrics in one line" meaning that they shouldn't position each and every syllabe separately (that would be truly ugh), and they misinterpreted it thinking that they should never place any syllabe groups on different levels. People tend to follow authorities blindly.

Can you give a rationale why we shouldn't do what i suggest?
My arguments for doing this are:
- it's easier to read when lyrics are close to their respective notes
- it's confusing when a Lyric line is closer to the unrelated staff than to the related staff
- breaking lyric lines into segments allows for more efficient vertical spacing.

Just look at the "Stripes" example and imagine how it would look like if alto lyrics in third system were placed on one level: http://lilypond-stuff.1065243.n5.nabble.com/file/n5607354/example_1_-And_with_His_stripes%28Messiah%29.pdf
In my opinion it would be really ugly.

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Google Importer - 2012-03-31

Originally posted by: PhilEHol...@googlemail.com

I think it's likely to be easier to follow a line of lyrics when they are all at the same level - moving them up and down would, I think, break the ability to read fast. That said, your example is a good one of where doing this makes sense - there is no line to follow. I think this should definitely not happen by default - but it could be possible to make it happen with something like \vertBreak in the lyrics.

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Google Importer - 2012-03-31

Originally posted by: janek.li...@gmail.com

What about adding a property MinimumBreakDistance or sth. like that? It would specify how far syllabes must be from themselves to allow breaking a lyric line into segments in that place.

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Google Importer - 2012-03-31

Originally posted by: PhilEHol...@googlemail.com

I could personally live with that.

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Google Importer - 2012-03-31

Originally posted by: tdanielsmusic

> What about adding a property MinimumBreakDistance

I'd be happy with that too, but again it all depends on where the lines break. Lyric lines are already independently positioned quite nicely. What is being proposed here is a change in the vertical positioning within a line. That means it has to be actioned after the lines are defined, i.e. after line-breaking, which makes it tricky to do, I think.

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Google Importer - 2014-07-21

Originally posted by: pkx1...@gmail.com

On 21/07/14 20:40, Aliosha Bielenberg wrote:
>> I'm not top posting.
>
> % To be aesthetically pleasing, the end of one
> % hairpin should line up with the start of the
> % next, i.e. be symmetrical, if they're right next to one another.
> \version "2.18.2"
>
> \relative c' {
> f8.\< d16\! g4.\> f8\!
> }

2014-07-21 22:15 GMT+02:00 Steven Weber <panteck@hotmail.com>:
> Try:
>
> \relative c' {
> f8.\< d16 g4.\> f8\!
> }

Nevertheless, what Aliosha says is a valid feature request (it's not
always desirable to have decrescendo right after crescendo, but they
should still align).

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Google Importer - 2015-05-02

Originally posted by: simon.al...@mail.de

Unfortunately, the link in comment #2 is broken.
I agree that there should be a possibility to segment those lines, but only if there is a sufficient gap inbetween. Perhaps a ‘minimum-break-distance‘ as mentioned in comment #4 should be around 1/4 of the whole line by default (measured in moments), or (ten? twenty?) times commonShortestDuration, or whatever. It’s difficult to say, since it depends on context very much.
(Just brainstorming – implementation is surely really complicated.)

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Google Importer - 2015-07-01

Originally posted by: simon.al...@mail.de

By the way, what does comment #7 do here? I opened a new issue – #4473 – to keep track of it. We can’t delete comments, can we (except everybody his own)?

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Vertical positioning of Lyrics, Dynamics etc. - breaking into segments

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#2459 Vertical positioning of Lyrics, Dynamics etc. - breaking into segments

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