5.5 Placement of objects
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.
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.