Re: Issue 3457: Add snippet `Using \partcombine with lyrics'. (issue 11328043)

[markpolesky]

On 2013/07/18 20:47:05, dak wrote:
> Folks, this is the reference manual, not "obscure hacks
> for adventureous geeks".  If we anticipate that a task is
> common enough to warrant an entry in the reference manual,
> it warrants a user interface.

Fair enough.

> We might or might not want to cobble this user interface
> together using a technique like that, but if we are really
> proud of it, we can still point out that the
> implementation, to be found in xxx.ly, might be
> instructive.

> So what would be a nice and natural user interface, and
> what pieces are missing from it?

<<
  \new Staff \with { printPartCombineTexts = ##f } <<
    \new HiddenVoice = "voiceForLyrics" \sopranoNotes
    \new Voice {
      \key g \major
      \partcombine \sopranoNotes \altoNotes
    }
  >>
  \new Lyrics \lyricsto "voiceForLyrics" \words


"HiddenVoice" could also be "LyricsVoice" I suppose, but
"HiddenVoice" seems more sematically flexible.

This interface could possibly also solve another problem
that I have from time to time: in chorales, when the voices
use the same lyrics but have slightly different rhythms,
sometimes it's preferable to print a lyric syllable *in
between* where it would fall in the different voices.  A
hidden voice (that the lyrics could align with) could solve
that (as long as it doesn't alter the spacing of the printed
voices, that is).

As for its usefulness, for me it would be an enormous
time-saver.  A lot of my LilyPond work is typesetting 4-part
choir pieces, and without this feature I often end up
entering two voices as one like this:

upperNotes = \relative d' {
  <d g>4 << { fis8( g) } \\ d4 } >> <d a'>4 <d g> |
  <d c'>4 <d c'> <d b'>2
}

... just so the Lyrics context has something to align to.

Each time the voices diverge rhythmically, I have to enter a
new << { ... } \\ { ... } >> construct, which gets tedious,
difficult to maintain, and impossible to extract the
individual parts from.  If I really need to extract voices
later, then I'm stuck going through each voice adding
\voiceOne and \voiceTwo all over the place, which is no less
tedious.  And then if I need to transpose it, half of the
stem directions are wrong.

So yes, I would save untold hours if I had this feature.  I
can't speak for anyone else, but we might ask the other
choral-music typesetters among us for their opinion.

- Mark

https://codereview.appspot.com/11328043/