Fixed vertical spacing and a confession

[dan_kreider]

Below are a few pics from a recently-published book I engraved. What’s unique about this project is that it’s the first one I’ve done with completely uniform vertical spacing: 48 pts between systems, 48 pts between vocal and piano staves, and 30 pts between the piano staves.

I wanted to choose values that never had to be shifted, and I managed that (mostly). I know this approach is not common, and it may not be everyone’s preference. But I’ve started using it more frequently, both here and for hymnal work. I was really pleased with the result: the book is about 190 pages, and everything just looks so uniform from page to page. (well, obviously, since all the pages match spacing).

Now the confession: I came here to make a feature request, but I was completely unaware of this option until about 10 minutes ago:

Because of my ignorance of this setting, I had to revise the staff spacing over and over again after edits continually messed it up.

Then, this option, which I was vaguely aware of, but which never occurred to me to use:

I could have set my staff spacing once and copied it to all successive pages in each file. So in short, I wasted hours by overlooking these two settings.

I guess the lesson here is that there’s always more to consider in workflow, and more settings to learn. Hopefully this can help someone else avoid the same needless work!

[Derrek]

It is a very attractive layout, Dan.
Thank you for pointing out these options.

[JeroenH]

Really looks nice, and an interesting option to know!
Few questions though:

• the only way you can define a uniform vertical spacing is going to Engrave mode, Staff spacing and there define for each staff the exact spacing, right?
• I do not quite understand how the “Automatically resolve collisions” works together with the manual staff spacing in step 1? I have (briefly) tried something, but when I choose that automatic resolve, the before defined spacing is ruined and I can start all over! Or is that exactly what you meant, and have you finally switched it OFF in order to obtain the uniform spacing?

I can imagine that in some music this works very beautiful (perhaps SATB choir), but in other not at all, especially when you need a lot of ledger lines.

[dan_kreider]

Yes, you need to turn that option off, and then the staff spacing will stay wherever you put it.

Correct, you define the point distance between each staff and system.

And you’re right, it certainly doesn’t work in every piece of music. Even in this publication, there were a few pages that had to be cheated a little.