Re: balloonText and DoublePercentEngraver

[Jean Abou Samra]

> [Lukas]
> This can be conventiently handled with \after - and also note that 
> some of your # and ' and " characters are not necessary anymore:


Ah, yes, \after. I promise I'll be used to it
by tomorrow! :-)


Le 22/12/2021 à 06:15, Werner LEMBERG a écrit :
> > > \new Score \with {
> > >    \consists "Balloon_engraver"
> > > }
> > Ah, sorry, I forgot one:
> >
> > \new Score \with {
> >    \consists Balloon_engraver
> > }
> Thanks.  I normally use extra `"` to mark stuff that is not a keyword.
> It seems I should revisit that practice...


If we get syntax highlighting in the docs,
that might be relevant. Quoted strings are
just strings, but unquoted names can be
recognized as builtins. (Plus, I don't know
why people quote engravers whereas nobody
writes \new "Staff" or
\override "NoteHead"."color".)


> Undocumented... While adding a balloon is probably exotic, being able
> to modify other properties of a `DoublePercentRepeat` grob is
> important. To do that, you have to know where it is timewise.


Well, it's not very logical, but not entirely
illogical either. The DoublePercentRepeat sign
is printed on top of a bar line, and it occurs
exactly at the same point as that bar line.


> > This can be conventiently handled with \after [...]
> This is a very elegant solution.  On the other hand, it feels like a
> hack – is Joe User really expected to find a grob with `\after`?  I
> would consider something like the following as 'natural':
>
> ```
> \once\override DoublePercentRepeat.slope = #.3
> \repeat percent 2 { e'2 e' e' e' }
> ```
>
> Would it be possible to make `\repeat` accept such overrides, passing
> them down to the various repeat grobs?


The best solution I can imagine is bringing
DoublePercentRepeat in line with what it
semantically represents by turning it into
a spanner going through the two bars. Then
each DoublePercentRepeat will start at the
beginning of its repeated section and the code
you first tried, putting \override at the end of
\repeat, will just work. However, this
is tricky to implement today because
there is no provision for spanners to reserve
space inside of break align groups -- you
have to create cumbersome stub items. Note
how this is more or less similar to
the implementation problems with your wish[*]
of having line spanners reserve space for
the texts at their bounds.

I personally have too much on my plate to
work on that at the moment. It may be wise
to open a tracker issue.

Best,
Jean

* https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2021-11/msg00546.html