Removing empty staves

[Phil Holmes]

I've been trying to set up a score where all empty staves _except one_ are 
removed, and so have been experimenting with  \RemoveEmptyStaves  \override 
VerticalAxisGroup #'remove-xxx.  It's thrown up a few oddities which I 
thought were worth pointing out, and it may be what I've found could be used 
in the documentation.

First, trying this:

\layout {
 \context {
   \Staff
   \override VerticalAxisGroup #'remove-first = ##t
   \override VerticalAxisGroup #'remove-empty = ##t
 }
}

which I thought might work, simply removes all staves from the score, 
whether they're empty or not.  I thought override VerticalAxisGroup 
#'remove-empty = ##t might be a synonym for \RemoveEmptyStaves and so this 
surprised me.  It looks like a bug, although the usage isn't used in the 
docs.

\layout {
 \context {
   \Staff
   \RemoveEmptyStaves
   \override VerticalAxisGroup #'remove-first = ##t
 }
}

as expected, removes all empty staves correctly.  To ensure that one staff 
is not removed, code like this works well:

\new Staff {
 \override Staff.VerticalAxisGroup #'remove-first = ##f
 \override Staff.VerticalAxisGroup #'remove-empty = ##f
 \clef "bass" R1*35
}

I think this could be documented in the docs.  I don't think it's in the 
LSR, but that's down at present and I can't check.  The basic model that 
seems to work best is to globally remove all empty staves, and then locally 
turn that option back on in the staff definition.

--
Phil Holmes
Bug Squad