Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Topic: Wish-list: Eliminate (or allow control of) courtesy hyphens (Read 6302 times) previous topic - next topic

Wish-list: Eliminate (or allow control of) courtesy hyphens

When you include hyphens in lyrics and a hyphenated word happens to occur at the end of a line, the hyphen gets repeated at the beginning of the next line.  I have NEVER seen this repeated hyphen in published sheet music, hymnals, etc. 

According to the post at https://forum.noteworthycomposer.com/?topic=9078.msg64660#msg64660, you can eliminate this second hyphen manually by forcing a line break at the appropriate point in the Lyrics dialog.  Yes, this does work, but it is tedious, it makes a mess of the lyrics as shown in the dialog, and you have to keep updating the lyrics if you change note spacing, etc., and the lyrics get shifted.

In short, there should be a checkbox somewhere in the Properties to automatically show/hide these second or courtesy hyphens.  And the default should be "hide".

Thank you.

Re: Wish-list: Eliminate (or allow control of) courtesy hyphens

Reply #1 –
Elaine Gould in Behind Bars (p448) would disagree with you. In any case a quick search of a vocal music collection shows that the hyphen on the next line is common.

Re: Wish-list: Eliminate (or allow control of) courtesy hyphens

Reply #2 –
At least the two standard songbooks of the Lutheran church in Germany don't place a hyphen at the beginning - see two attached examples.

I managed to do it with a "whiteout" trick - see first staff in the attached example. The idea is:

Place an XText object with Class StaffSig (so that it occurs on each staff), with a white text that covers the hyphen.

Some details:
  • You need to set one Highlight Color to white (in Tools->Color; I always use "Highlight 4" for this).
  • The text is "%0x2588%   ", which is the "block character" (a black rectangle) and three spaces, with Justification Right so that it extends to the left. With multiple lines of text, you maybe need "%0x2588%   %br%%0x2588%" or the like (i.e., blocks separated by line breaks); I have not tried this.
  • For positioning, you shift this XText up and down (position of the XText) and left and right (number of blanks in text) until it covers the unwanted hyphens.
  • Then you change the color of the object to "Highlight 4" (or whatever your White color is)
A kludgy workaround, but might help in some cases ...

H.M.

Re: Wish-list: Eliminate (or allow control of) courtesy hyphens

Reply #3 –
I think that we can all agree that as a feature (adding an option to suppress the extra hyphen), it should be fairly straight-forward to implement. I can imagine that there is a special set of logic to add the extra hyphen under the right conditions, and the program only needs to skip that logic when the option is set (or not set).

Regarding whether the option should be set or not set by default, I'd say that the default setting needs to be how the current version behaves, for backward compatibility with existing saved scores. There are probably some people who expect (and prefer) the current behavior.
 

Re: Wish-list: Eliminate (or allow control of) courtesy hyphens

Reply #4 –
I agree with Mike's logic on the default setting.