Re: \lyrics, was Re: Vertical spacing of figured bass

[Noeck]

Hi David (W.),

> I don't have enough background information to know whether the
> introduction of "\lyrics" was to improve consistency with its
> friends, or just for brevity (popular in the unix world).
> Yesterday I was leaning to the latter, in which case one could
> imagine contractions like "\new Voice" → "\voice".

As you wrote yourself below, these shorthands are for places where you
would have to specify both a new context and an entry mode otherwise:

\new ChordNames \chordmode { … }    ->  \chords
\new DrumVoice \drummode { … }      ->  \drums
\new FiguredBass \figuremode { … }  ->  \figures
\new Lyrics \lyricmode { … }        ->  \lyrics

For normal music you don't need to specify the input mode (\notemode)
and the staff is created automatically. So in some way
\new Staff \notemode { … }   has the shorthand  { … }.

> However, after stumbling on NR p589, I see that this change
> is being, or has been, applied only to mode-specifying commands
> so it wouldn't affect the commands alluded to above.

Yes.

Cheers,
Joram



PS: If one alreay understood the different modes and contexts, this
cheatsheet might help to remember them:
http://joramberger.de/files/lilypond_sheet_2.18_en.pdf (on the right on
the same line as the captions).