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neanes / neanes

Neanes is a free and open source scorewriter for notating Byzantine chant in Byzantine notation.
https://neanes.github.io/neanes/
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Handle whole-word drop caps #659

Closed basil closed 3 weeks ago

basil commented 3 weeks ago

https://github.com/neanes/neanes/pull/633#issuecomment-2068121485

danielgarthur commented 3 weeks ago

Sorry, I just remembered you had a link to your file. I see what you are going for. Should this gap always be desired or should it be a setting to turn on and off?

danielgarthur commented 3 weeks ago

Or perhaps O_ could result in the extra space, but O _ could not?

basil commented 3 weeks ago

I checked my copy of Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style, and he writes the following:

In English, if the initial letter is A, I, or O, a question can arise: is the initial letter itself a word? The answer to this question must come in the spacing of the text in relation to the versal. If the first word of the text is Ahead, for example, excessive space between the initial A and the rest of the word is bound to cause confusion.

I'm familiar with drop caps having some extra space in printed text when it's a one letter word, but I'm not sure I've seen neume lyrics with such large gaps.

That might just be because nobody has yet produced an English book of Byzantine music with this level of typographical rigor. I do not see a reason not to make this the only supported behavior.

danielgarthur commented 3 weeks ago

That seems logical and I am an agreement that this should be the only supported behavior. However, with the PR how it currently is, it seems like there is no way to distinguish between Ahead and A head in the lyrics. No matter what I do, I always get the extra space.

basil commented 3 weeks ago

I think the existing code fails to hyphenate a two-syllable word like "a-head" where the first syllable is a drop cap—even when typing a hyphen on the first syllable, no hyphen appears after typing the second syllable. I'm not making that problem any worse than it is already.

If you think this PR is introducing a bug, then please give me detailed steps to reproduce it from scratch.

danielgarthur commented 3 weeks ago

Oh, right... I need to get some sleep because I completely forgot that I should type A-head to get the results I want for Ahead.