Allow staff distances to "float" between a min and max as already happening for system distances
Reported version
3.2
Type
Graphical (UI)
Frequency
Many
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Reproducibility
Always
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
No
Project
Steps to reproduce issue:
1. Open a score with many parts, usually an orchestral score
2. Go to Format>Style>Page>Staff distance
As for now, it is possible to insert only one value for this distance. There could be an alternative option to choose to insert a floating value between a minimum and a maximum, as it is already happening for the system distance. This would be helpful if someone wants to have an orchestral score with all staves equally distributed in each page, without needing to do manual adjustements.
In the attached example page 1 and 2 are ok, but 3 and 4 need to be more spaced, and a lot of spacers would be needed for a balanced result.
See also https://musescore.org/en/comment/924739#comment-924739
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| oresole.mscz | 66.11 KB |
Comments
See also #276106: Auto space staves on a page and #124806: Allow "staff distance" on first page to differ from subsequent pages.. Each suggests a different solution to the same issue. Also #293293: Improve the staff hiding algorithm to allow custom control and bottom alignment for a different take.
Came up quite frequently
In one or more of the various forum threads, there has been discussion of how this might work. The trick is how to handle both staff and system floating and how to decide what to do. A suggestion I made is, if a system ends in a page break, we can know there aren't more systems, and we can safely go ahead and float the staff distances on this system. So that would be an OK way to get floating distances on pages with only a single system. Still not so clear how to get it on pages with multiple systems but maybe that isn't so crucial, maybe we just go with the min for staff and let the system be what floats, let people use spacers for staff distance as desired. I also mentioned we could maybe provide an absolute staff distance override for a given system break, would have the same effect as apply a spacer to each staff.
Hmm, a related idea that doesn't even require a new element type, property, or format change:
What if we made it so some special command/gesture (like, say, adding a spacer to a break, or holding Shift while adding the spacer, or whatever) automatically added it to all staves at once? And what if there was a single command you had that you could apply to a spacer that automatically adjusted the length to fill the page? It would be a semi-automatic solution - you'd need to revisit these if the layout changes for other reasons. But as a final step before publishing, could be useful. Heck, if the framework supported it, that could even be a plugin.