Time signatures above score, aligning short instrument names

[Nate Whetsell]

Hi,

I have a few questions related to score preparation.

I’m putting time signatures above a score using—

https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/90732/display-time-signature-as-single-number-above-the-staff#answer-90737

—which is based on https://lsr.di.unimi.it/LSR/Item?id=272. I’ve noticed two issues with this. First, the above-score time signatures are usually centered over bar lines, but not when a measure is preceded by a clef change. In this case, time signatures seem to be placed before the new clef rather than centered over the following bar line. Second, when a new time signature occurs at the end of a page, it seems to be centered on the right margin. In the case of compound meters, this can cause the time signature to extend off the page. I’ve tried setting break-align-orders (https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.23/Documentation/internals/break_002dalignment_002dinterface) and space-alist to fix this (https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.23/Documentation/internals/timesignature), but nothing seems to have an effect.

I’m also trying to set up a score more-or-less as shown on p. 509 of Elaine Gould’s Behind Bars, using—

https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.23/Documentation/snippets/text#text-aligning-and-centering-instrument-names

—as a starting point. If I set both short-indent and left-margin to 0.5 in., I can align short instrument names to the left margin using a \fill-line with a width of 6.75. My question is: is there a better way to do this? Hard-coding an arbitrary width of 6.75 (staff spaces?) seems less than ideal.

Here is a much-reduced example showing what I’m doing:

\version "2.23.80"

time-signatures = {
  \time 2/4
  s2 | \noBreak
  \time 3/4 % This time signature is not centered over the bar line.
  s2. | \noBreak
  \time 4/4
  s1 | \pageBreak
  \compoundMeter #'((1 1 3 4)) % This time signature extends too far into the right margin.
  s1*5/4 |
}

\layout {
  \numericTimeSignature
  \context {
    \Staff
    \override InstrumentName.self-alignment-X = #RIGHT
  }
}

\paper {
  short-indent = 0.5\in
  left-margin = 0.5\in
}

\score {
  <<
    \new Dynamics \with {
      \consists Time_signature_engraver
      \override TimeSignature.after-line-breaking = #shift-right-at-line-begin
      \override TimeSignature.break-align-symbol = ##f
      \override TimeSignature.font-size = #5
      \override TimeSignature.self-alignment-X = #CENTER
      \override TimeSignature.X-offset = #ly:self-alignment-interface::x-aligned-on-self
    } {
      \time-signatures
    }

    \new Staff \with {
      instrumentName = "Instruments"
      shortInstrumentName = \markup {
        \override #'(baseline-skip . 2.5)
        \override #'(line-width . 6.75) % Is there a better way to determine the line width?
        \fill-line {
          \lower #1.25 "Ins."
          \right-column { "1" "2" }
        }
      }
    } \relative {
      \clef "bass"
      c16 d e f g a b c |
      \clef "treble"
      c16 d e f g a b c d e f g |
      c,,16 d e f g a b c d e f g a b c d |
      c,,16 d e f g a b c d e f g a b c d e f g a |
    }
  >>
}