Re: [Lilypond-auto] Issue 2459 in lilypond: Vertical positioning of Lyrics, Dynamics etc. - breaking into segments

[lilypond]

Comment #2 on issue 2459 by address@hidden: Vertical positioning of  
Lyrics, Dynamics etc. - breaking into segments
http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=2459

I agree that providing examples of some practice doesn't mean it's  
necessarily a good practice.
However, i also think that having an authority say something doesn't make  
it always true.  Indeed, most of the scores place all Lyrics on one level;  
however, i think it's (at least partly) a historical and technological  
issue - often the text was typeset in a separate process, and because of  
that it had to be on one level.  Everyone got used to it and few tried to  
change this; things like that happen very often - just look at loads of  
scores with BarLines spanning whole ChoirStaffs unnecessarily.
I wouldn't be surprised if apprentice engravers were told "place lyrics in  
one line" meaning that they shouldn't position each and every syllabe  
separately (that would be truly ugh), and they misinterpreted it thinking  
that they should never place any syllabe groups on different levels.   
People tend to follow authorities blindly.

Can you give a rationale why we shouldn't do what i suggest?
My arguments for doing this are:
- it's easier to read when lyrics are close to their respective notes
- it's confusing when a Lyric line is closer to the unrelated staff than to  
the related staff
- breaking lyric lines into segments allows for more efficient vertical  
spacing.

Just look at the "Stripes" example and imagine how it would look like if  
alto lyrics in third system were placed on one level:  
http://lilypond-stuff.1065243.n5.nabble.com/file/n5607354/example_1_-_And_with_His_stripes_%28Messiah%29.pdf
In my opinion it would be really ugly.