Re: Left align first word of lyrics

[David Kastrup]

Gregory Heytings <address@hidden> writes:

>>
>>> Indeed, many thanks, I did not expect that the solution would be so
>>> trivial.  I tried with various values of self-alignment-X, but not
>>> with -1...
>>
>> -1 is the same as LEFT
>
> Okay, I did not read the manual carefully enough (again).

That was just intended to provide some missing information.  Frankly, I
wouldn't know where to look for it.

>>> The solution is not perfect, however.  I was more expecting a
>>> solution where the note is centered above the lyrics, and the
>>> lyrics aligned left; in this case the lyrics are indeed left
>>> aligned, but the note is also left aligned...
>>
>> What should the lyrics be left-aligned to then if not to the note?
>>
>
> To each other.  This would give something like:
>
>   o
> Cccc
> Ccccc
> Cc
> Ccc
> c
>
> with the note on the first line, and the lyrics on the five next
> lines. The lyrics are all left-aligned, and the note is centered on
> the longest lyric.

So the lyrics are supposed to be aligned as a block first which is then
centered on the note.  I think that the current machinery is rather
working by aligning everything independently to the note in question.

That would place the prealignment of the lyrics into the "seriously
tricky" realm.  So it is quite possible that you'll not get any "off the
cuff" elegant solution for this.

A good solution is also constrained by the alignment only being possible
when the lyrics have been turned into stencils, and that happens
depending on the text font defaults at the time of typesetting.

A tedious solution is likely doable where you basically specify
something like

\syllable #1 { Cccc Ccccc Cc Ccc c }
in the first stanza,
\syllable #2 { Cccc Ccccc Cc Ccc c }
in the second stanza and so on: then each stanza would typeset the whole
column, align it, and pick out the right row.

I hve my doubt you can do much better than that with reasonable effort.

-- 
David Kastrup