Re: Piano /centered/ dynamics

[Joe Neeman]

On Mon, 2009-11-30 at 11:58 +0100, Valentin Villenave wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 4:00 PM, Kieren MacMillan
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> >> is it possible to have the Dynamics (the \p in the example below)
> >> in a layout like the "Piano centered dynamics" really centered
> >> between the staves (i.e., the staff lines), instead of centered
> >> between the skylines of all elements in the staves?
> 
> > I offered to $pon$or such a feature 18 months ago, but nobody has taken me
> > up on the offer:
> >  <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2008-06/msg00591.html>
> 
> I'm Ccing Joe, as I believe his recent work on vertical spacing has
> potentially made this a lot easier to implement. (Although I'm not
> sure bribes work on him ;-)

There is some sort of dynamic centering already implemented (it just
works by default if you use the Dynamics context). However, it positions
dynamics so that they are centered between the actual staves rather than
centered between the bottom note of the top staff and the top note of
the bottom staff. Or at least, it tries to; if there is not enough space
then the dynamics are as close as possible to the centerpoint while
still obeying the various padding properties. I actually think this
looks better/more even than centering between the extents but I'm
willing to be convinced otherwise.

The second method (centering each dynamic individually) is likely to be
significantly harder, just because of how things are structured
(currently, we position the dynamics relative to each other /before/ we
do any of the line breaking and this is a bit hard to change).

FWIW, I'm happy to accept bribes, but they probably won't drastically
affect my TODO list priorities, just because my main constraint on
Lilypond work is time rather than money.

Cheers,
Joe