Re: names of vertical spacing dimensions

[David Kastrup]

"Trevor Daniels" <address@hidden> writes:

> Although this is a good point, the problem is not as
> stark as this might suggest.  There are many situations
> when writing LilyPond code when score-wide settings are
> inappropriate.  This is just another.  \override permits
> appropriate setting to be made at each point in the score.

You don't know in advance where the pagebreaks are.  And you don't get
coherent document design if you have to place a bunch of manual
parameters at every element.

> Variables or music functions can be used to make this
> less painful, e.g. \editorialNote could be defined to set
> the spacing parameters, set \noPageBreak, print the
> following markup and then revert the spacing parameters.
>
>> I don't think that this is a sensible change for 2.14.
>
> I do.  If at some time in the future the code is changed
> to recognise the distinction between a title and a footnote
> the names of the new spacing parameters would naturally
> follow the new naming pattern, although I think that change
> is unlikely to happen.

And it is particularly unlikely to happen, because then we need to
invent and maintain score-footnote-spacing, system-footnote-spacing,
markup-footnote-spacing, footnote-footnote-spacing,
footnote-score-spacing, footnote-markup-spacing,
footnote-system-spacing, footnote-bottom-spacing, top-footnote-spacing
and the associated page break penalties.

In short, we are going down a road now where any user-visible
improvement (for which the necessity is clear) will become increasingly
painful to do for both developers and users.

Since obviously I am alone with this opinion among the developers,
I would suggest polling the users on the Lilypond user list whether they
think this change a step in the right direction and desirable for 2.14.

After all, they will be affected most.

-- 
David Kastrup