In my opinion, the biggest problem with the vertical spacing in LilyPond today, is the use of rectangular boxes around each stave to determine the spacing. The attached example illustrates what I have in mind.
Unfortunately, it seems very complicated to improve this situation (TeX/LaTeX, for example, uses the same basic strategy).
/Mats
Kieren Richard MacMillan wrote:
Hello, Ralph:
If I look at professionally produced stuff, within a system, the staves are always equidistant.
Actually, I have found just the opposite: the staves are *rarely* exactly equidistant! And this is especially true from page to page (as opposed to within a block of staves on one page): the staves expand and contract to accommodate the material. (I just confirmed with several scores of different types here at home...)
They may *appear* to be equidistant -- and, of course, they may actually *be* equidistant from time to time -- but from my experience (and double-checking), it seems that the goal of most engravers is to maintain a consistent "colour" of music (i.e., density of musical symbols) throughout a given score.
I'm sure that a consistently spaced score page is more pleasing to the eye
than one that squeezes and stretches to requirement from page to page.
I would agree with this -- for one (extreme) example, I would much rather not use or engrave "condensed" scores (where empty staves are removed altogether), since it often makes it more difficult for the eye to follow individual musical lines, and it can lead to a false sense of performance "density" in the reader.
However, to qualify my agreement: when one must choose, I feel that it is more important to maintain a consistent "colour" to the score than exact spacing of staves.
Regards, Kieren.
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-- ============================================= Mats Bengtsson Signal Processing Signals, Sensors and Systems Royal Institute of Technology SE-100 44 STOCKHOLM Sweden Phone: (+46) 8 790 8463 Fax: (+46) 8 790 7260 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WWW: http://www.s3.kth.se/~mabe =============================================
\version "2.1.7"
\score { \notes \context Voice
{
c,,1 | c' | c' | c' | c' | c' | \break
c' | c' | c' | c' | c' | c''''' | \break
c' | c' | c' | c' | c' | c' | \break
}
\header{piece = "Default spacing"}
\paper {
\translator {
\ScoreContext
System \override #'molecule-callback = #box-grob-molecule
}
}
}
\score { \notes \context Voice
{
\property Staff.verticalExtent = #'#'(-8 . 8)
c,,1 | c' | c' | c' | c' | c' | \break
c' | c' | c' | c' | c' | c''''' | \break
c' | c' | c' | c' | c' | c' | \break
}
\header{piece = "Better (?) spacing"}
}
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