RE: Question about left-aligning syllables at beginning of lines

[Eduardo Silva]

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Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2013 13:34:03 -0400
Subject: Re: Question about left-aligning syllables at beginning of lines
From: address@hidden
To: address@hidden
CC: address@hidden

The best I can do for a sample at the moment is this PDF that is an advertisement for a hymnal that uses left-justified first syllables. It does not right-justify the last syllables.

http://www.sumphoniahymnal.com/copy-content/hymnal-info-toc.pdf

This hymnal does something else I wouldn't mind being able to do. You'll notice on page 2 (with the picture of the print sample) that the lines on the left side are shorter than those on the right side. They do this so that they can break the systems at the end of lyrical phrases, rather than margin breaks, without stretching out the lyrics to the point of unreadability. However, this is not the same as ragged-right, as I understand it. The lines are not engraved at their "natural" lengths, but are set at the best width from a set of possible widths (so that, for example, line with 10 syllables may take the full line length, but two lines with 6 syllables may both take 70% of the line length if one line sets naturally at 68% and the other at 75%.

Furthermore, the systems in a hymn are left justified within the hymn, but the hymn itself is centered on the page.

Also, is there a command/property for score footers, as in the example? Right now, I'm replicating this with markup commands, but would like to be able to stylesheet this like the score headers.

So, for whoever may be keeping score or trying to figure out how many directions this thread is going in, I've asked about this:

1. Left-aligning the first syllable of every system.

   Hi, Carl, this feature is in my wishlist too. I have several songbooks and hymnals that  follow at least this convention of left aligned first syllables. Doing that manually is a pain, especially if you don't know which syllable will be the first in the next system.

I'm also having an impression that using lilypond to produce hymnals with words and notes too tight/crammed can be a real challenge.

Regards,

Eduardo