New lyrics behaviors

• Dec 21, 2013 - 21:57

I'm experimenting with lyrics in the development builds and just wondering what I need to know. I see a new "lyrics verse" element in the text palette (and an associated text style), but I don't know how to use it.

I also don't know how to find the synalepha (lyric slur) character in the new text symbols palette.

I see a new Lyrics line height parameter in Style / General / Page - I gather that controls line spacing, expressed as percentage of nominal.

When using Shift+Space to navigate backwards through lyrics, the cursor used to be positioned at the end of the syllable. Now it's the beginning. Was this deliberate? Seems like a bug to me.

Anything else I should know about?

BTW, it would be fantastic if someone familiar with this aspect of the code were to look at #3961: Melisma line over system break. That's been bugging me a long time.

Comments

• Dec 30, 2013 - 23:30

Lyrics Verse": I assume it is for the number at the beginning of the piece to mark 1st, 2nd, 3rd 'strophe' (English?), but I found no way to get the program to use it. Possibly, I'm totally wrong.

Synalepha: it was wrong in the the old version, it is bugged or absent in most fonts; I'm giving up on it...

#3961: There is a worse (and related) bug: not only you cannot enter a melisma across a system break; even a melisma which has been entered and then ends up across a system break is no longer shown!

It is bugging me a loooong time too (and the same is true for Figured Bass too, because I had no example to follow), but so far it is too above my head to attempt to correct it.

So, no good new, I'm afraid, but we should lobby to have it corrected!

Thanks,

M.

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• Dec 31, 2013 - 04:42

Thanks for the comments. I've discovered that a lyric verse element can be added from the palette to your score by attaching it directly to the syllable you want it to appear in front of. It displays too low because the default Lyric Verse style is set to top alignment rather than baseline. And if you try to edit it by double clicking it, it jumps to a different position. So there seems to be issues with it, but it does basically work.

Too bad about synalepha. Does SMuFL not provide for this? I didn't see anything obvious, but it seems a strange omission.

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• Dec 31, 2013 - 15:00

Makes sense, and with the text style mechanism, mixing fonts within a lyric is not as good an option as it was before. We could add the synalepha character to FreeSerifMscore and MuseJazz, I guess. Better would probably be to have this handed specially rather than entered as an ordinary character within a lyric - a command in lyric mode to enter the character. And the portion of the lyric before and after would probably be represented as separate lyrics attached to the same note. Something to consider for 2.X, perhaps.

BTW, regarding dynamics, I think I see one reason why using SMuFL code points for lyrics is problematic. I have scores I created in 1.3 where I had redefined the Dynamics text style. This causes the dynamics be displayed as boxes in the development builds.

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• Feb 10, 2014 - 17:29

Nice, thanks!

Not sure if this would have worked before the recent changes to text handling with fallback fonts, but I have verified I can use this to create a lyric with this character.

Definitely makes me hope for the stripped down version of the palette, because finding this would be tough for someone who didn't know how where to look.

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• Feb 10, 2014 - 18:21

I assume you are talking about the shortcuts to add a hyphen or space within a single lyric syllable, On Windows, these are Ctrl+hyphen andCtrl+space. And sure enough, they don't work.

Seems this is new? I thought this was working recently. Anyhow, probably a separate bug.

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