Re: Some newbie troubles, especially with text

[Mats Bengtsson]

Please send usage questions like these to the lilypond-user mailing
list. Also, please always tell what LilyPond version you use, to be 
sure to get a relevant answer.



Quoting David Feuer <address@hidden>:

> Main problem:  I can't seem to figure out how to make even simple 
> text look decent.  There seem to be 7000 different options for 
> dealing with text, all of them confusing.  In this case, I just want 
> simple "Fine" and "D.S. al Fine", but I really can't figure out how 
> to make it work right.  The example given in the docs, using \mark, 
> doesn't work, and that seems like a nasty hack anyways.

Exactly what doesn't work? Are you sure that you read in the version of 
the manual corresponding to the version you use? I think there has been 
a bug in some 2.7.x versions so that the alignment of \mark didn't work 
correctly. Maybe that's what you have noticed?

>  I _think_ what I want is for the end of the D.S. al Fine to line up 
> with the _right_ side of the last note in the piece, but I could only 
> get it to line up with the _left_ side (using ^).
Try something like
\once \override TextScript #'self-alignment-X = #RIGHT

>  Not being an expert engraver, I'm not actually sure /what/ I want, 
> but whatever it is, I'm sure I don't know how to get it. Suggestion 
> 1: teach Lilypond some of the standard text markings: Fine, D.S. al 
> Fine, D.C. al Fine, D.S., D.C., and to Coda would be good to build 
> in, particularly because they should affect MIDI playing.

If you search the mailing list archives, you will find a number of 
related discussions over the years. Two arguments againts this is that
there are so many different versions of D.S, D.C with and without codas
and with different notations ("segno" versus a segno mark, for example)
that it would be very hard both to implement and to use. Also, the MIDI
support is mainly intended to be used for proof reading ("proof listening")
a score while typesetting it and in such situations you don't want the 
MIDI file to reflect all the D.S.

> It'd also be good to make a category of sorts for tempo markings: 
> rit., a tempo, etc.  Please try to improve the documentation for 
> alignment in general and text in particular, and try to make it more 
> friendly.  It's not a good sign that text shows up in the "advanced" 
> section of the manual.

There are thousands of different settings that you may want to do in 
LilyPond. The next time, you might want to move a dynamic sign slightly
or change the layout of a title or ... The point is that it's impossible
to cover all of it in the manual. Therefore there are several other 
sources of information available, such as the Tips and Tricks document, 
the Regression Test document (in spite of its name, it's a very useful
collection of examples), the LilyPond Snippet Repository (see 
www.lilypond.org -> Documentation) and of course the mailing list
with its archives.

Once you have found a nice solution that you like, please don't hesitate
to send it to the mailing list and/or add it to the snippet repository
and/or suggest additions/modifications to the documentation, to make
the program even more useful to others.

  /Mats