Adjusting space between lines

[Stephen Torri]

In the annotated version of my sheet music I see that the spacing
between measure lines is dictated by the variables 'next', 'space' and
'padding'. My problem right now is that too much space is being used
between measure lines. I see equations used to calculate the spacing to
be:

next-padding (padding just below a measure line)

space after next-padding (padding just above the next measure line)

How can limit how much these two values can be?

Stephen