Re: Aligning single systems?

[Boris Shingarov]

Hi David,

> for theoretical work it often is necessary to write several short
 > systems in one line, interspersed with text.
 
This is exactly what we are doing.

 > I don't manage to have
 > a) new systems continue aligned to the previous system in a line, like
 > when doing
 > \line { \score { ... \layout {} } some text \score { ... \layout {} } }
 
I am not sure I understand what the problem is.
Do you mean having several embedded scores on one line?  Like this:
\markuplines {
  \justified-lines {
    some text
    \score { ... \layout {} }
    more text
    \score { ... \layout {} }
  }
}
What is the functionality missing from this?
 
> b) to have interspersed text appear at useful height with relation to
 > the surrounding score.
 
We were able to obtain nice looking results via a combination of
adjustments to baseline-skip, minimum-Y-extent, staff-space, and other
similar standard settings, I can't remember off the top of my head what
they were, but the idea is, achieving it did not require any custom
programming work, nor even Scheme scripting.  What I am struggling
with right now, is the crappy vertical spacing of lines that results. 
Because the "padding" / "spacing" specifications are only specific to
text lines, and embedded scores *are* text lines to the page layout
algorithm, my text-only lines are spaced visually much more tightly
than lines containing embedded scores.  I think the G clef is (at
least partly) to blame.

 > Would it be possible to have some Staff property, say, baseline-height
 > that specifies a Staff line to be aligned with the baseline of
 > surrounding constructs?

Hmm... so it would be relative to what, the bottom of the bounding
rectangle?  Or I think more usefully, to the middle staff line?  so
one could say: "the middle lines of all embedded staves are always 1mm
above the baseline of the text".  That would be way cool, and I don't
see why it would be too hard to implement.
 
Boris