Measure Spacing Not Consistent

• Oct 23, 2011 - 20:37

I set the scaling on the page settings at 1.764mm and under the General Style I have the system distance at 12.2sp. That's how I like it. The problem is it only keeps those settings for the first page. All additional pages do not retain these figures. Why is this? I want every page to have these settings.


Comments

All pages should indeed have those settings, and they do. I'm guessing you are simply seeing the results of the Page Fill Threshold setting in Style->Edit General Style-> Page. Any page fuller than what is specified there will be stretched to fill the page. The very last system is also affected by another fill threshold setting in that same dialog.

So if you want to see the effect of your system distances without any page fill effect, set the page fill threshold to 100. That will disable page fill entirely.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

is, for example, the third page of a three page lead sheet is only, say eight or nine measures. I'm not getting the same spacing between measures on that last page as I am on the first two pages. I apologize. I should have specified that in my original post. I've attached a picture to clarify.

Thank you for your reply.

Attachment Size
Example.jpg 188.31 KB

In reply to by Splops

Right, this is exactly as I said. The first few pages are being spread out because they exceed the page fill threshold, the last page is not. You could lower the threshold to 0% and that would force the last page to be spread out, but of course, since it has fewer systems, it would be spread out much more than the other pages.

If the goal is to get the spacing in the third page to be spread out the same amount as the previous pages, the trick is to actually fill that page up the same amount as the others. Not by adding more music, of course, but by adding a Spacer (see Handbook; it's the vertical bar in the Breaks & Spacer palette) or a vertical frame (also described in the handbook) below the last system. That's what I do in my own lead sheets. Add a spacer and size it to just barely fill up the page - stretch it until it actually forces a new page, then back off until it fits on the page again - you'll end up with basically the same spacing as on the other pages that were already being filled. That's how I do all my lead sheets.

You might wonder why I didn't design the template so that the first pages had the correct spacing already, and did not need to trigger the page fill. The answer is that I wanted it to look good whether you had six, seven, or eight systems on that first page, and to also scale well depending on whether you wanted to fit eight or nine systems on the second page. This required coming up with some compromises, one of which was that when the last page is too empty to trigger the page fil look tighter than the rest, meaning a spacer or vertical frame will help.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Re: "but by adding a Spacer (see Handbook; .."

I just thought of another way.
Place an end repeat where you want the piece to stop.
Fill the rest of the page with the appropriate number of Staves. "Hide empty Staves". I've not tried this, just thought of it. I will try it my next opportunity.
Regards,

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