eliminating large space between staves on last page of score
I went under style, put in new parameters on space between grand staves, but then when I closed the page it didn't change the score. Any ideas on how to eliminate large space between staves?
This is for a composition contest, so I don't feel I can show the work. Can anyone still help with a fix?
Comments
Format > Style > Page > Disable vertical alignment of pages
Or append a vertical frame and size it (disable its autosize first)
Or use a spacer
By far the best answer - especially if this is for a competition! - is, don't have fewer systems on the last page than other pages. A bunch of blank space on the last page looks unprofessional whether it's distributed between staves or all bunched at the top and/or bottom.. Simply figure out where to add breaks to balance things out better so all your pages are more equally full.
If you have further questions, please attach the score so we can understand and assist better.
In reply to By far the best answer -… by Marc Sabatella
We'd really need a last page fill threshold here.
Having some empty space at the bottom of the last page is quite normal in printer notes
In reply to We'd really need a last page… by Jojo-Schmitz
We kind of do have settings that should control this, but they broken in 3.6.2 with vertical justification enabled, that's why the hack of disabling it "works", but breaks everything else about score layout and thus isn't recommended.
There can indeed be some special situations where empty space at the bottom of the last page of a score might make sense, but when entering music for a competition, it's usually important to obey the typical standards unless there is a very special reason not to.
In reply to We kind of do have settings… by Marc Sabatella
Which settings exactly?
In reply to Which settings exactly? by Jojo-Schmitz
I'm not sure how many, but in particular, it's the "Max. system distance" under the "Enable vertical justification of staves" that should be controlling this, but fails to. The band-aid workaround of disabling vertical justification allows the corresponding version of this setting in the the "Disable..." section to work correctly - and the default of 15 sp is pretty reasonable. But of course, now vertical justification is disabled, and all the other pages will likely suffer for it (unless it's a score of just one or two staves in which case it won't matter much).
If the bug were fixed, then simply setting 15 sp in the "Enable..." section would work, and I'd also be arguing that perhaps the default should be lowered from the current 32 sp. Or even, at some point, made to be more of a sliding scale that expresses the max distance not in terms of sp but as a percentage of the system height, so you can have 32 sp between two systems of a string quartet, say, but not piano.
This is, to me, one of the three or four bugs in 3.6.2 most worth having a 3.6.3 to fix, except that as far as I know there is no single;e PR that fixes this without introducing a lot of other unnecessary (for this purpose) changes. As I recall, there was a PR created for master to deal with this while also doing a more significant (and thus risky) refactoring, and it was merged as-is for the 3.x branch. But my impression is, the actual fix should have been was a one-liner, something about that value being multiplied by some sort of scaling factor inappropriately.
In reply to I'm not sure how many, but… by Marc Sabatella
Max. staff distance plays a role here too and would need to get decreased.
Do you mean https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/7529 ?
In reply to Max. staff distance plays a… by Jojo-Schmitz
Max staff distance plays a role if this is a score for more than a single instrument indeed, but we don't actually know this right now (or do we?). But, max staff distance does work correctly regardless of the justification setting, as far as I know.
To be honest, the rush of PR's merged just after the release 3.6.2 was a bit too much for me to keep up with, so I'm not always sure which fixed which issues, which were originally developed for master and which were truly intended for 3.x, etc. The PR you mention does seem to include code dealing with max system distance, but it also fixes an issue with spacers that I remember confirming at one point but as far as I can tell doesn't actually exist on 3.6.2. So perhaps there were two different branches for the spacer fix and the one got merged for 3.6.2 but the other is here the code for the max system distance fix was added to? Kind of hard to say.
But I believe the relevant lines actually needed to fix the max system distance are the ones that add "/ _factor" to calculations involving maxActualSpacing.
In reply to Max staff distance plays a… by Marc Sabatella
Then it is that PR
In reply to Then it is that PR by Jojo-Schmitz
Right, except everything else in the PR seems not relevant to this and questionable as to purpose - there doesn't seem to be a specific issue that those changes address. Might have been something on Trello? I remember there being an issue with spacers at the bottom of pages in 3.6.1 or 3.6.0 or maybe the RC or beta, but as far as I can tell spacers work correctly in 3.6.2. So I'd be very nervous about seeing this PR as is included in any prospective 3.6.3 without a better understanding of what is actually going on.
In reply to Right, except everything… by Marc Sabatella
The spacers thing is another one (too?): https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/7756
In reply to The spacers thing is another… by Jojo-Schmitz
Indeed, there have been a bunch of different PR's - some merged pre-3.6.2, some merged after; some for 3.x, others for master - that touch on some aspect of this. And it's not always clear which PR's are for which issues specifically. But as far as I can tell, not one single PR that address the issue of max system distance being misinterpreted without also including unrelated code that may or may not actually be relevant for 3.6.2.
In reply to Indeed, there have been a… by Marc Sabatella
At least they all passed all mtests (and vtests). And as far as I can tell do work quite well in general, I'm using my 3.x branch on a regular basis
In reply to At least they all passed all… by Jojo-Schmitz
Understood, but still, 3.6.2 passed mtests and vtests too and yet is clearly broken in this respect :-). To me risk management is crucial. There is a known serious issue with max system distance that has, I believe, a simple and safe fix. I'd very much favor seeing an update that included that fix on the very short list of known serious issues with known safe fixes. Code I don't understand the purpose of, no way would I support including.
To solve this, I added extra bars at the end, with line breaks to create the right number of staves; then set those extra bars to invisible in bar properties. It formats okay - which is the main thing - and removing any remaining braces or other stave names etc is much easier.
In reply to To solve this, I have added… by Martin Adams 2
Hmm, that works, but is definitely far more difficult than simply adding a spacer. Or simply reducing the max system distance or page fill. But better still is to just add breaks to better balance your pages, so the last page doesn't have fewer systems in the first place.