"Grand staff distance" should be allowed to be decreased for specific measures
Style -> General -> Page -> Grand staff distance
If you set this, there is no way to decrease that distance. You can increase it with the "staff spacer", but you can't decrease it.
Since my score is particularly complex I should put a staff spacer on every single measure: this is nonsense, so I changed the "Grand staff distance" of my score style and now every measure is looking fine. However, there is a simple part in my score where that distance is too much and make those specific measures look bad, so I would like to decrease it.
Whatever specific solution you came up with, I would like if this gets solved.
I understand that it's generally the inverse: you get to write a complex part and you use the staff spacer to get more space for you notes/markings. But still, sometimes your entire score is complex and only few parts need less space.
Comments
This seems important.
In reply to This seems important. by xavierjazz
I agree. It's just something I never bothered to address, but I probably should have for the reasons mentioned by the original poster.
It's long been my practice to choose a Grand Staff Distance that is the smallest one I'm likely actually to use - in order to conserve space where possible, and to allow for maximum possible expansion with spacers where necessary while ideally keeping a consistent number of systems on a page.
The necessary consequence is that the majority of systems will require spacers to add space between the staves of the grand staff - and that's a bit tedious. However, that said, even if it were possible for spacers to truncate as well as expand, I think the practical result would be about the same: viz., one would choose an average Grand Staff Distance and, once line breaks were appropriately determined, most systems would still be adjusted to be either taller or shorter than the 'average'.
I am, of course, speaking of piano music that is by nature dense with (1) dynamics and phrasing that might be independently entered for each staff, (2) fingerings that might be stacked above the upper staff and below the lower staff, and (3) pedaling indications below the grand staff. Obviously, space between every system is at a premium - so one must be prepared to adjust spacing of the grand staff accordingly. And all of the foregoing means that space between systems will inevitably - more often than not - also require manual adjustment with spacers. And, as with spacers in the grand staff, they're presently adjustable only in one direction: to add space, not remove it.
I've gotten used to working the way I've been working - but this Feature Request, if implemented for allspacers, would be most welcome. The functionality of a Spacer would be literally doubled, and the enhancement to flexibility would be immeasurable.
In reply to I agree. It's just something by [DELETED] 448831
>However, that said, even if it were possible for spacers to truncate as well as expand, I think the practical result would be about the same: viz., one would choose an average Grand Staff Distance and, once line breaks were appropriately determined, most systems would still be adjusted to be either taller or shorter than the 'average'.
OP here. You know, I thought about that a while after posting, and I agree.
I would also add that I discovered that you can set the spacers to "invisible" and still editing them anyway placing the cursor where they are expected to be, even if you can't see them, and the controls are fine enough that we can do that easily. So this solves the problem of having too many blue lines around.
So, given that, I guess the feature, although welcome to have, is certainly minor.
In reply to >However, that said, even if by 255
It never occurred to me to make a spacer invisible, but I do frequently toggle Show Unprintable on and off in the View menu of prereleases for 2.0 (which is not available in the Display menu of 1.3).
FWIW, a useful working method might be:
1) set a wide grand staff distance while working
2) when done, turn the grand staff distance down back down to something like the default
3) add spacers to the first bar of the systems that will need it, but don't resize them yet
4) right click one spacer, select all similar
5) use Inspector to increase them all together
6) go back and fine tune