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From: haccme@milton.u.washington.edu (Thomas Ridgeway)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: Put something above a word ?
Summary: sample macro to do so
Message-ID: <18749@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 20 Mar 91 17:34:26 GMT
References: <1991Mar20.102509.7980@dit.upm.es>
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 30

Regarding putting musical chord notation above the lyrics for a song:

% TeX code begins here
% quick hacks for above-line display of short bits of text
\newdimen\bangback
\def\bangup#1{\setbox0\hbox{#1}\bangback=\wd0\raise\baselineskip\box0\hskip -\bangback}

Suppose that we are just running along in the midst of a paragraph, and we 
want to do what you propose with setting some chord notation above the text:
this is the text with o\bangup{G\#}verset bits of stuf\bangup{A}f.  We would
just go ahead and bang it up there.

Probably most likely you would want to put it into a display line, rather
than into a paragraph, or along with typeset music.

\centerline{I don't think th\bangup{B$\flat$}at the display line is a problem}

\noindent but there is just no telling what kind of interaction you might get
with the macros that would be setting the music (if that is what one were doing).

I am not too sure about the merits of the negative hskip versus another way
of hiding the width; mostly what we want to do is prevent the raised portion
from becoming separated from its mainline text at the beginning or end of 
a line.  Also, raising the chords an entire baselineskip above the mainline
may be just a tad too far, but this ought to give you something to get started
with.


\bye
Tom