Comment #22 on issue 1713 by [email protected]: Whole note/dotted note collision in polyphony
http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=1713
The patch removes several constants (1.25, 1.35, 0.7 and 0.75) and replaces them with some generic formula. It may be a great thing for other projects, but I don't think it's a good approach for Lilypond. The constants are based on a human choice of what is "just right" for the distance between notes. Those numbers may be later made available for tweaking. A generic algorithm makes it harder to tweak one distance without tweaking other distances.
I believe there should be no slight changes. The new code should provide exactly the same distances for the cases not affected by the bug.
I don't think we have a good test for collisions. We need a big test, a matrix with all combinations of notes that can collide. That should cover all styles, all standard shapes of noteheads, all durations and all pitch differences.
Such test might find new problems, which is OK. They would be outside the scope of this patch. However, the differences in the output should be checked for regressions.
