Re: lyric alignment

[Werner LEMBERG]

> > I think there is a serious bug in lyric-align.ly.  As soon as you
> > remove the second stanza, the `alignment' property of LyricText is
> > completely ignored which is *very* bad.  Please fix this ASAP -- I
> > need this :-)
> 
> this is hardly ASAP, but ehrrmmm, this is caused by
> 
>       2002-07-28  Glen Prideaux  <address@hidden>
> 
>              * lily/syllable-group.cc (set_lyric_align): Only fiddle
>              with alignment if a note has more than a single lyric
>              so single stanza songs are aligned correctly
> 
> which was more or less put in by your request

Well, shit happens :-) To be serious, this is a bad change, not
reflected in LilyPond's manual BTW.

The documentation of automaticPhrasing says: 

  If set, the @ref{Lyric_phrasing_engraver} will match note heads of
  context called Voice X to syllables from LyricsVoice called
  X-<something>.  This feature is turned on by default.  See the
  example file @file{lyrics-multi-stanza.ly}.

Alignment isn't mentioned at all, and I strongly believe that this is
the right thing!

IMHO we have to extend/separate the parameters to control alignment:
One set for alignment relative to the stanzas and another set to
control how the stanzas are aligned relative to the note.  Examples:

      alignment = centered
      stanza-alignment = right

             o

           This
             is
              a
           test

      alignment = right
      stanza-alignment = centered

             o

          This
           is
           a
          test

      alignment = left
      stanza-alignment = left

             o

             This
             is
             a
             test


The default values should be

  alignment = centered
  stanza-alignment = centered

and for multiple stanzas one has to say

  alignment = centered
  stanza-alignment = left

More complicated alignment should be possible also (by overriding
stanza-alignment locally):


           o

        This
          is
        a
        test

Overriding `alignment' in different stanzas makes no sense.  Perhaps
the last `alignment' value for a given note should be used.

I haven't actually looked into the LilyPond source code, but it is
rather straightforward to implement my suggestion:

  1. Collect all syllables for a given note.

  2. Get the length of the longest syllable and create an \hbox with
     this length.

  3. Put all syllables into this \hbox line by line, using \hss on
     either the left, right, or both sides according to
     `stanza-alignment'.

  4. Align the \hbox with the note head according to `alignment',
     `begin-alignment', and `end-alignment'.

[You probably won't actually use such an \hbox, but it makes the
description easier to understand.]

It's not clear to me whether global alignment on punctuation is a good
thing at all.  After some thinking I believe that it should be dropped
and replaced with a per-note control as suggested above.


    Werner