Mats Bengtsson <mats.bengtsson <at> ee.kth.se> writes:
This is why many people try to use \partcombine for choral scores.
However, as you can see from the mailing list archives, there are
some problems with the current implementation of \partcombine.
Indeed there are. Partcombine may be useful for hymns -- I wouldn't
know -- but in choral music notated on two staves, you usually want
\lyricsto to work for all voices and in most cases you want two stems
even when the voices sing the same note.
A part combiner that can be told only to combine rests could be
useful, but the warning message tells me this could probably be
handled at the staff level.
Note that I'm not saying that the Lilypond way of doing this is wrong;
it looks good enough to me, and I've had no complaints that I can
think of. It does go against all typographical convention, though.
(Long ago, I used to do e.g. "r8 e e e r e16 e e8 e" in one voice and
"s8 c c c s c16 c c8 c" in another, and Lilypond would center the lone
rest. That worked fine unless I wanted to typeset both a two-staff
and a four-staff version. I'm not complaining that it stopped
working, either; it's more logical now. I know I can say "\oneVoice
r8 \voiceOne e e e \oneVoice r \voiceOne e16 e e8 e"; that's rather
more tedious and still doesn't solve the two-version problem. Plus, I
want my \voiceOne and similar declarations in my score block, not in
the music itself. And I know that I can say "x=\voiceOne y=\voiceTwo
z=\oneVoice" and "\z r8 \x e e e \z r \x e" etc, and redefine x, y and
z to no-ops if I want a four-staff score, but I'd still be doing a job
that a computer program could do better...)
Anyway. The warning message is wrong in the case of rests. I
wouldn't mind an option to make what it says become true (assuming
that typographical conventions were followed), but right now it says a
lot and does nothing.
BTW, how much would it cost to sponsor a "rest combiner", if I can
find the money? I'd be happy to write test cases that demonstrate
what rests should be combined and what shouldn't... ;-)
(The specification is very simple, really: When all voices in a staff
(that \consists RestCombiner or whatever) have a simultaneous rest of
equal length, the RestCombiner swallows those rests and typesets a
vertically centered rest. "<< r4 \\ r4 >>" becomes "r4".)
Cheers,