On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 1:26 AM, Mark Polesky
<address@hidden> wrote:
Well, so many extensive replies to respond to! It's great,
but it makes for a long post, and I do hope the thread
participants read to the end; there's a lot of relevant
stuff for everyone here. Thanks.
* * * * * * * * * *
Joe Neeman wrote:
> I would argue that the baseline is more natural then the
> bottom. Moreover, using the baseline as a reference point
> will result in more even spacing of multiple consecutive
> lines of markup.
Okay, that's a good point, so I agree -- baseline is better
than bottom. But do you agree with Carl and Trevor that we
should always use the same reference point for markups? I
was specifically proposing to use the bottom of the upper
markup and the top of the lower markup for
between-title-spacing, but Carl argued eloquently against
it. Carl's argument is probably much more solid than mine,
but just for the record, what do you think?
I don't care so much about one versus two reference points (although the current code only works with one), but I do think that the reference points should not depend on any ascenders or descenders.
I've noticed that in many traditionally-engraved scores, the
distance from the bookTitleMarkup baseline to the first
system seems to be *independent* of the distance from the
scoreTitleMarkup baseline to the first system.
For example, say score1 has title/subtitle/etc. in the usual
place (top center), and piece/opus also in the usual place
(flush left and flush right just above the top system), and
the top system has no protruding skyline. Now score2 has
all the same titling but the top system has a really high
note just before the rightmost barline.
To prevent a collision between the last note and the opus,
LilyPond will shift the first system down. Fine. But what
I've noticed in the classic scores is that in this
situation, the top system is not shifted down, but rather
the opus is shifted *up*. This is an important difference!
It means that the placement of the top system is determined
by the bookTitleMarkup, and the scoreTitleMarkup is
determined by the top system. And it usually looks better
this way (and more consistent from score to score). I guess
I wouldn't be surprised if Joe says that this would be more
trouble than it's worth*, since it seems to go against the
whole pattern of the current spacing algorithm, but I think
it would be a big step towards fully professional-quality
scores.
*and if he says it would be easy, well that would just make
my day...
I won't say it's more trouble than it's worth, but I don't think it's trivial. In lilypond-spacing-backend terms, I think you want to treat the opus markup as a "loose line."
Cheers,
Joe