??? The default clears a chord symbol by 1sp already. There is only a potential collision with the *number*, not the line. But that is best resolved *horizontally*, not vertically, and there is no style setting for that, so unfortunately one needs to resolve it manually.
If you are having a problem with some particular score, be sure you did not alter any settings. If you believe you have, please attach the score you are having trouble with so I can compare to the defaults on my system.
The collision is with the number. This happens to me every time I make a leadsheet, so is not a particular score. I've always had to move the first chord symbol of a volta right, which is not only frustrating, but also can cause the first chord symbol to look like it is not exactly on the downbeat.
Moving the voltas up is worse in my opinion. Now your staves are crowded together more, or you need to increase system distance and hence number of systems over page.
Actually, though, the better workaround is to extend the Volta left.
Well I know I hate manually adjusting these things. But I won't argue about so sorry I'll close the PR. Maybe can make a 3.0 feature request to automatically move the volta start left (or have the volta text automatically cause the first chordrest to start a little right than without a volta).
Yes, it would be good for this to be among the things 3.0 handles automatically.
FWIW, I hate having to manually adjust things too, but this was the best compromise I could find for 2.0. I did a lot of comparing to published charts and so forth when producing this template, and the volta height I picked is more or less much what others do as well. If you check a variety of such charts, you will see they use a variety of strategies to avoid collisions. For one thing, they often use a larger value for the barline to first note distance, so the chord symbol ends up just barely clearing the number. That's something we could consider for sure - a value of 1.5sp, for example, solves the problem reasonably well at the expense of taking slightly more space. We can also play with the size and position of the number.
But you also see publishers making all sorts of manual adjustments in the cases where collisions happen. Depending on the chart, sometimes move the voltas up, other times they move the chord down, other times they do horizontal adjustments of one or both. They also sometimes just make the chord symbol smaller.
But, note that collisions do not always happen. Sometimes there is no chord symbol one beat one, or sometimes beat one starts with an accidental and hence is already offset by enough. And of course, for big band and combo charts, the score and most of the parts generally won't have chord symbols at all.
Thanks for bringing the issue up. Maybe we can both experiment with the various style settings to see if we can find something that works well. I'd rather not mess with the height of either chord symbols or voltas, or with the size of chord symbols, but any of the following could potentially be modified without raising eyebrows::
Style / General / Measure / Barline to note distance
Style / Text / Volta / Size
Style / Text / Volta / Offset
After playing a bit, I find a reasonable compromise is to use the following settings:
Style / General / Volta / Barline to note distance: 1.6sp
Style / Text / Volta / Offset / Horizontal: 0.3sp
Style / Text / Volta / Offset / Vertical: 1.5sp
Here's how it looks:
I do worry a little that the extra space in front of each measure might cause some things to not fit on a single system that otherwise would, but luckily, jazz lead sheets tend to have relatively few measures per line (often with explicit breaks every 4), so at least the extra space doesn't accumulate too much. And existing scores aren't affected by changes to templates.
I like your compromise in #8, and would much prefer that over the current leadsheet template. But still one problem is that if by chance had as measure-rest but still have chord symbol (for instance if melody doesn't have any notes in the volta and user never changed that measure-rest into a whole rest), then the volta text and chord symbol conflict (as shown in volta 1 which is measure-rest...volta 2 is whole rest and doesn't have that problem):
But I guess that might be a general fact that measure-rests not obeying the same spacing rules.
Also it is too bad there isn't a "Style / General / Volta / Barline to note distance" property, because that would mean only have extra space for voltas...you have a typo there because there is only "Style / General / Measure / Barline to note distance" property! :P
As you said I don't think should worry about the extra space causing things to not fit, because jazz leadsheets are usually pretty light on the notes anyway.
(oh as an aside, I notice Volta Text property's don't get applied to currently existing voltas...but most other text applies get applied to currently-existing elements)
Is it too late in the game to maybe add an extra layout rule "Volta barline to Chord Symbol minimum space"?
Good catch, probably chord symbols attached to measure rests (well, more technically, attached to the initial segment of a measure) should obey the barline to note distance parameter. Same for staff text, probably other elements as well. Looks like 3.0 already behaves this way. Meanwhile, for 2.x, best to simply manually move the chord symbol to the right.
While I get why a separate Volta barline to chord symbol minimum space" setting might seem to make sense, I think that's too specific. We need a general purpose collision-avoidance scheme. To some extent the framework for this is in place for 3.0, and it does avoid collisions between chord symbols and voltas - but without giving specific control over *how*. Not sure if this in the cards or not.
The reason volta text style doesn't update existing elements is that a volta is not in itself a text element - it is a line, that *contains* text elements (up to three of them - begin, continue, end). We don't current seek out the text elements within lines when updating a text style. This has come up before, but no solid plan that I can recall to address it.
Comments
??? The default clears a chord symbol by 1sp already. There is only a potential collision with the *number*, not the line. But that is best resolved *horizontally*, not vertically, and there is no style setting for that, so unfortunately one needs to resolve it manually.
If you are having a problem with some particular score, be sure you did not alter any settings. If you believe you have, please attach the score you are having trouble with so I can compare to the defaults on my system.
The collision is with the number. This happens to me every time I make a leadsheet, so is not a particular score. I've always had to move the first chord symbol of a volta right, which is not only frustrating, but also can cause the first chord symbol to look like it is not exactly on the downbeat.
Moving the voltas up is worse in my opinion. Now your staves are crowded together more, or you need to increase system distance and hence number of systems over page.
Actually, though, the better workaround is to extend the Volta left.
Well I know I hate manually adjusting these things. But I won't argue about so sorry I'll close the PR. Maybe can make a 3.0 feature request to automatically move the volta start left (or have the volta text automatically cause the first chordrest to start a little right than without a volta).
Yes, it would be good for this to be among the things 3.0 handles automatically.
FWIW, I hate having to manually adjust things too, but this was the best compromise I could find for 2.0. I did a lot of comparing to published charts and so forth when producing this template, and the volta height I picked is more or less much what others do as well. If you check a variety of such charts, you will see they use a variety of strategies to avoid collisions. For one thing, they often use a larger value for the barline to first note distance, so the chord symbol ends up just barely clearing the number. That's something we could consider for sure - a value of 1.5sp, for example, solves the problem reasonably well at the expense of taking slightly more space. We can also play with the size and position of the number.
But you also see publishers making all sorts of manual adjustments in the cases where collisions happen. Depending on the chart, sometimes move the voltas up, other times they move the chord down, other times they do horizontal adjustments of one or both. They also sometimes just make the chord symbol smaller.
But, note that collisions do not always happen. Sometimes there is no chord symbol one beat one, or sometimes beat one starts with an accidental and hence is already offset by enough. And of course, for big band and combo charts, the score and most of the parts generally won't have chord symbols at all.
I like the idea of having the first beat start after same amount of space as an accidental if there is none.
I'll leave this issue open.
Thanks for bringing the issue up. Maybe we can both experiment with the various style settings to see if we can find something that works well. I'd rather not mess with the height of either chord symbols or voltas, or with the size of chord symbols, but any of the following could potentially be modified without raising eyebrows::
Style / General / Measure / Barline to note distance
Style / Text / Volta / Size
Style / Text / Volta / Offset
After playing a bit, I find a reasonable compromise is to use the following settings:
Style / General / Volta / Barline to note distance: 1.6sp
Style / Text / Volta / Offset / Horizontal: 0.3sp
Style / Text / Volta / Offset / Vertical: 1.5sp
Here's how it looks:
I do worry a little that the extra space in front of each measure might cause some things to not fit on a single system that otherwise would, but luckily, jazz lead sheets tend to have relatively few measures per line (often with explicit breaks every 4), so at least the extra space doesn't accumulate too much. And existing scores aren't affected by changes to templates.
Would still love to see more feedback.
I like your compromise in #8, and would much prefer that over the current leadsheet template. But still one problem is that if by chance had as measure-rest but still have chord symbol (for instance if melody doesn't have any notes in the volta and user never changed that measure-rest into a whole rest), then the volta text and chord symbol conflict (as shown in volta 1 which is measure-rest...volta 2 is whole rest and doesn't have that problem):
But I guess that might be a general fact that measure-rests not obeying the same spacing rules.
Also it is too bad there isn't a "Style / General / Volta / Barline to note distance" property, because that would mean only have extra space for voltas...you have a typo there because there is only "Style / General / Measure / Barline to note distance" property! :P
As you said I don't think should worry about the extra space causing things to not fit, because jazz leadsheets are usually pretty light on the notes anyway.
(oh as an aside, I notice Volta Text property's don't get applied to currently existing voltas...but most other text applies get applied to currently-existing elements)
Is it too late in the game to maybe add an extra layout rule "Volta barline to Chord Symbol minimum space"?
Good catch, probably chord symbols attached to measure rests (well, more technically, attached to the initial segment of a measure) should obey the barline to note distance parameter. Same for staff text, probably other elements as well. Looks like 3.0 already behaves this way. Meanwhile, for 2.x, best to simply manually move the chord symbol to the right.
While I get why a separate Volta barline to chord symbol minimum space" setting might seem to make sense, I think that's too specific. We need a general purpose collision-avoidance scheme. To some extent the framework for this is in place for 3.0, and it does avoid collisions between chord symbols and voltas - but without giving specific control over *how*. Not sure if this in the cards or not.
The reason volta text style doesn't update existing elements is that a volta is not in itself a text element - it is a line, that *contains* text elements (up to three of them - begin, continue, end). We don't current seek out the text elements within lines when updating a text style. This has come up before, but no solid plan that I can recall to address it.