Make staff spacing on last page match justified staves?

Dorico
1

I have a good handle on vertical justification, and I generally set it around 70% to space systems to fill the frame. It’s beautiful.

The problem is that, if the last page has only a couple systems, I don’t want it to justify to fill the frame (since it’s nowhere near the percentage threshold, and the staves would be ridiculously far apart). But that means the staves usually look a little squished compared to the previous page. I try to monkey with Ideal Gaps and such, but it never quite works the way I want it to. I (almost) always need to manually adjust the staff spacing on the final page.

Here’s a typical example, before I start applying manual staff spacing to the last page:

It’s hardly a burden, sure, but it would be really nice to add an option that would copy the vertically-justified spacing from the second-to-last page and automatically apply that staff spacing on the last partial page so they looked the same. It would be incredibly easier to make the last page match the others.

Thanks for considering. Always looking for ways to make spacing more pleasing without manual adjustments.
staff spacing.png

2

An idea for making the manual adjustments easier: Don’t try to fix the staff spacing on the last page by moving the staves. Drag the bottom of the music frame up to about half way between staves 3 and 4 on the first page, and let justification do the rest of the work for you. Since the top staves are in different positions, and in general the staff spacing won’t be perfectly uniform, that means you have only one thing (the size of the music frame) to adjust by eye.

If you move the bottom of the frame using the control in the properties panel, you can watch the staves move “in real time,” rather than dragging the frame with the mouse and having to guess how far to move it.

3

Rob, that’s brilliant. Works like a charm.

My original request still stands, but this is worlds easier than what I was doing. Thanks!