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<a name="Automatic-behavior"></a>
Next: <a rel="next" accesskey="n" href="Within_002dstaff-objects.html#Within_002dstaff-objects">Within-staff objects</a>,
Up: <a rel="up" accesskey="u" href="Placement-of-objects.html#Placement-of-objects">Placement of objects</a>
<hr>
</div>
<h4 class="subsection">4.4.1 Automatic behavior</h4>
<p>There are some objects in musical notation that belong to
the staff and there are other objects that should be
placed outside the staff. These are called within-staff
objects and outside-staff objects respectively.
<p>Within-staff objects are those that are located on the staff
– note heads, stems, accidentals, etc. The positions of
these are usually fixed by the music itself – they are
vertically positioned on specific lines of the staff or are
tied to other objects that are so positioned. Collisions of
note heads, stems and accidentals in closely set chords are
normally avoided automatically. There are commands and
overrides which can modify this automatic behavior, as we
shall shortly see.
<p>Objects belonging outside the staff include things such as
rehearsal marks, text and dynamic markings. LilyPond's rule for
the vertical placement of outside-staff objects is to place them
as close to the staff as possible but not so close that they
collide with any other object. LilyPond uses the
<code>outside-staff-priority</code> property to determine the order in
which the objects should be placed, as follows.
<p>First, LilyPond places all the within-staff objects.
Then it sorts the outside-staff objects according to their
<code>outside-staff-priority</code>. The outside-staff objects are
taken one by one, beginning with the object with the lowest
<code>outside-staff-priority</code>, and placed so that they do not
collide with any objects that have already been placed. That is,
if two outside-staff grobs are competing for the same space, the
one with the lower <code>outside-staff-priority</code> will be placed
closer to the staff. If two objects have the same
<code>outside-staff-priority</code> the one encountered first will be
placed closer to the staff.
<p>In the following example all the markup texts have the same
priority (since it is not explicitly set). Note that ‘Text3’
is automatically positioned close to the staff again, nestling
under ‘Text2’.
<blockquote>
<pre class="verbatim">
c2^"Text1"
c^"Text2"
c^"Text3"
c^"Text4"
</pre>
<p>
<a href="../80/lily-e70fca46.ly">
<img align="middle"
border="0" src="../80/lily-e70fca46.png" alt="[image of music]">
</a>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Staves are also positioned, by default, as closely together as
possible (subject to a minimum separation). If notes project
a long way towards an adjacent staff they will force the
staves further apart only if an overlap of the notation
would otherwise occur. The following example demonstrates
this ‘nestling’ of the notes on adjacent staves:
<blockquote>
<pre class="verbatim">
<<
\new Staff {
\relative c' { c a, }
}
\new Staff {
\relative c'''' { c a, }
}
>>
</pre>
<p>
<a href="../8b/lily-eacf9a1c.ly">
<img align="middle"
border="0" src="../8b/lily-eacf9a1c.png" alt="[image of music]">
</a>
</p>
</blockquote>
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<p>
Next: <a rel="next" accesskey="n" href="Within_002dstaff-objects.html#Within_002dstaff-objects">Within-staff objects</a>,
Up: <a rel="up" accesskey="u" href="Placement-of-objects.html#Placement-of-objects">Placement of objects</a>
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