How do I increase the numbers of measures per line?
Instead of taking up 9 pages, I'd like to print out just 4 or 5 pages. How do I increase the numbers of measures per line?
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There are several of ways to get more music on a page. Either reduce the basic staff size (Layout->Page Settings->Scaling), or the space between systems (Style->Edit General Style->Page), or you can squeeze notes closer together (Layout->Add Less Stretch).
In reply to There are several of ways to by Marc Sabatella
Interesting, I just got to this point myself ... so thanks.
I had trouble trying to use add more/less stretch. While I could reliably adjust it for individual measures using Measure Properties, and I could shift-drag-select over several measures in a staff and use the more/less commands, other situations were more difficult. Select All followed by less/more seems to work sometimes, but other times is ignored, and I have not figured out when it works and does not. Also, I have not figured out how to select several measures which are not all on the same system. This situation in particular calls for it, since if MS is formatting (say) three measures on a system where I want four, the obviously thing to do is to select the four measures (which are currently three on one system and one on the next) and reduce the stretch until they fit.
I found several of the options on Style->Edit General Style->Page useful: I reduced Music Upper/Lower Margins, System distance, and Lyrics Upper/Lower Margin. All these together (not even using stretch reduction, since I could not get it to work reliably for me), I took a score which started filling three pages and overflowing a little on fourth, and got it on two pages, which is the same as the better of the hand set versions I've seen (the other uses three pages). While there are a few layout problems at the detail level, it looks good at the page level. The piece is 30 measures; the better hand set version puts three measures in the first two systems and four in the rest, where MS makes 3-measure systems at measures 21 and 24. The MS spacing is mostly better, though the 3-measure system at m21 is due to bad placement of the word "beschworst" -- the long second syllable forces a stretch which the hand version avoids by starting both syllables to the left of the note. Of course I can adjust the lyrics position in MS, but this was largely an experiment to see what MS could do automatically, and in any case the result looks good.
Edward
In reply to more by paleolith
Selecting several measures not on the same line is easy - click the first, shift-click the last. And yes, that would be the starting place for adding less stretch to get them on the same line.
I've never had any problems with stretch after a select all. Is it perhaps that you just didn't do it enough times to have a noticeable effect in terms of measures actually changing systems? But you have noticed notes moving around from the first time you did it.
In reply to Selecting several measures by Marc Sabatella
ARRGH! I was trying to do ctrl-{ instead of just { ... if I'd tried the menu again, I'd have realized it was working from the menu and not from the keyboard. (I do think that MS's combinations of key qualifiers needs to be re-thought. For example, having all note entry unqualified makes sense because that's data, not commands. But this is a command ...)
I had tried shift-click but saw that not all notes were selected. Now however I see that adjusting the stretch applies to the entire measure even when only some notes are selected. Now that I'm using the right key combo ...
Yeah, I definitely tried it plenty of times -- if I'd been hitting the right key combination. In fact, the problem I have with adjusting the stretch is that the step size is way too large -- 0.1 when 0.01 would be good (per my experience adjusting it via measure properties). If there's a way to lower the step size, I haven't found it.
Thanks,
Edward
In reply to PEBKAC by paleolith
I don't know to what extent thought has gone into an overall plan for how keyboard shortcuts are organized; I suspect they've sort of developed as new features were added. But FWIW, you can customize them all via Edit->Preferences->Shortcuts.
As for shift-click, always you have to find an empty spot in the measure when clicking to get it to select the whole measure. sometimes that's easier said than done But just shift-clicking the last note seems like it is just as good, and when it comes to stretch in particular, selecting even part of a measure seems good enough.