Vertical justification
What I mean by this is that the systems are evenly spaced so that the bottom ones line up on all pages. In other words there are no part-filled pages. The traditional typesetting of music means that any score you buy has n pages, and every page has (roughly) the same number of systems, and every page including the last is basically filled with score. I can't find an option for this in Style, but would much prefer to have it.
I guess that the traditional method was for the engraver to look at the manuscript, and if all bars are more or less that same size, decide on a number of pages, divide into the total number of bars, and then divide the bars on each page into the number of systems, with adjustments for repeats (as far as possible arranged to match page breaks). The only part of this that seems to be supported is setting the "Last system fill threshold" to zero, so there are no part lines.
I prefer this because it looks like "real music". I suppose that the beginnings of computer set music had lots of limitations, and we started getting scores consisting of two pages, one system, and a two-bar fragment, which I (personally) find ugly. Personally I would write using exclusively Continuous view, which is the logical form of the score, then paginate later, and ideally I would like to choose the number of pages, then the system default would paginate to fill these.
The immediate prompt for this is an arrangement I made (Nutcracker final waltz and apotheosis for 2P4H). Publication as a PDF file means it is a good idea to have the title and arranger etc info on the first page, so it can't get chopped off. This means that the first page only has two systems, and there doesn't seem to be a way to down-align the second system.
Comments
You can go into the style->General... dialog and on the page adjust the Min. & Max. system distances to help even systems. I think the Max. will be most helpful to you. You can also use page breaks or line breaks to force more systems on to the last page. You can also use invisible notes in hidden staves on a system to force it to be visible to make a system longer. Once thing you can't do until version 3.0 comes out is to combine instruments into a single staff to make a system shorter.
These all seem to be things I have seen to make systems fill pages mostly evenly when there are different numbers of staves in a system.
If every system has the same number of staves you can use the Layout->Page settings... dialog and make adjustments there so your systems will fit properly on the pages.
In reply to You can go into the style-… by mike320
Ah thanks: setting the "Max system spacing" to 999sp (why the largest value allowed?!) did the trick. In other words, actually Musescore is justifying vertically, just being reticent about it.
About the more general idea: Yes, of course, Musescore does this perfectly now, as long as "perfectly" includes an indefinite amount of manual adjustment. What I am suggesting is a large-scale optimisation to space out a score over n pages. Of course n could be found automatically, and in all cases some manual adjustment would be preferable.
In reply to Ah thanks: setting the "Max… by Imaginatorium
999sp (why the largest value allowed?!)
1sp defaults often to somewhere between 1.2 and 1.7mm; Let's get conservative and assume we've configured 1sp (the size between two staff lines) to be just a single millimeter. The resulting maximum value of 999sp would allow a space of 999mm between just two systems on a single page. I'm not sure which page sizes you're using; but I'd like to see the first sheet of music printed where two systems on the same page need to be over 1 meter apart.
For the record, the defaults are chosen to work well in the widest variety of cases, but there is no one best group of settings that will work equally well for all page sizes, all staff sizes, all system sizes, etc. That said, it would be a mistake to assume that "The traditional typesetting of music means that any score you buy has n pages, and every page has (roughly) the same number of systems, and every page including the last is basically filled with score". This is true for some types of scores, but most definitely not all. In fact it is pretty rarely true for ensemble parts, it is not very often true for lead sheets, etc. It is more often true for piano music or ensemble scores.
In reply to For the record, the defaults… by Marc Sabatella
Yes, of course you are right -- the last time I played in an orchestra was the 1960s, and I was thinking of piano music particularly, but also things like vocal scores.
Arguably, a "justify / fill" option would be a useful idea; by "fill", I mean that by default the score would fill a whole number of pages. Again, an independent function (which could probably just be a plugin; I don't know) called "Paginate" could do this by calculating the default total length of the score, rounding up to a whole number of pages, then dividing the score evenly into the resulting number of systems. (This would not work well for scores which keep jumping around with different numbers of parts per system, but that's good because the latter is generally antisocial.)
Can you tell me where I can find a definition of the effect of seting "minimum" and "maximum" values for system spacing. It seems to be curiously ill-defined. (I mean that the "minimum system spacing means the minimum value for system spacing" type of answer doesn't work.)
In reply to Yes, of course you are right… by Imaginatorium
There is the Handbook section on page layout, and of course the chapter of my book :-). Bit more direct answer; minimum distance means MuseScore will only add as many systems to a page as it can while spacing them at least that far apart. If four systems can fit on the page with 12sp between them but adding a fifth system would cut the space down to 8sp, then MuseScore won't add the fifth system if the minimum is set to 9sp. So, it limits the number of systems per page, basically.
Maximum means once MuseScore decides how many systems it can fit, it will space them as far apart as it can ideally trying to fill the page, but it will stop spreading them out ifnspace goes.neyond the maximum. So that three one-line systems don't fill the page with enormous gaps between them.
In reply to Yes, of course you are right… by Imaginatorium
Page by page, the current system actually does quite well in providing two simple controls that offer a great deal of flexibility across a wide variety of score types. However, it is a "greedy" algorithm - one that basically makes each page as full as possible, not caring if that leaves the last page less full than it need be. A less "greedy" algorithm certainly has merit, and actually wouldn't be hard to program in the face of changing system sizes - you just need to think about evening out the system distance rather than evening out the number of systems.
The problem is, this isn't actually a good way of going about deciding where page breaks should go in multi-page scores. It usually is more important to think about things like, how easy physically is it for a musician to turn the page at that point (after a long rest is perfect), how difficult would it be to remember the last few measures if physically it makes sense to turn earlier, etc. It's actually one of the more subtle arts of good music engraving. So there is really no substitute for an expert human making this determination. And in that respect, a greedy algorithm is actually best, because it involves less work to override the decision of a "greedy" algorithm than a "fair" one (just add appropriate page breaks).
LilyPond, I gather, tries to do these sorts of things automatically, could be worth someone looking into how they go about it.