Re: Widening excessively tight horizontal spacing

[address@hidden]

On 2 oct. 2012, at 12:43, James Harkins <address@hidden> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Is it possible to manipulate the horizontal spacing settings differently for 
> different sections of a piece?
> 
> The situation: This score is currently for sheng solo. (Eventually I might 
> add some graphic representations of the electronic parts, but they are 
> indeterminate and I haven't figured out how to notate them yet.) Most of it 
> looks fine, except for a section in the middle with a lot of 16th notes. That 
> section appears too tightly spaced for my taste. So I would like to adjust 
> the spacing only for that section. (Other sections look great as they are.)
> 
> I tried overriding Score.SpacingSpanner #'base-shortest-duration, using 
> smaller note values, but it made no difference in the output. I put the 
> override at the beginning of one of the music variables for that section.
> 
> Part of my reason for wanting to do this is that the score fits on six pages 
> except for one staff system. I suspect one reason why there is so little 
> music on the seventh page is that lilypond (maybe?) is trying aggressively to 
> fit everything on six pages, over-compressing the notation in some places, 
> but it still isn't enough. So I figured, one way to get a more reasonable 
> seventh page would be to loosen the notation horizontally a bit. (I'll also 
> open up system-system-spacing #'padding in the \paper block.)

Hey James,

Have you put \newSpacingSection before the override?  When the Spacing_engraver 
spots one of these, it'll stop the current SpacingSpanner and start a new one 
to which the override will be applicable.

For a SpacingSpanner starting in the beginning of the piece, I'd recommend 
placing the override in the layout bloc.

\layout {
  \context {
    \Score
    \override SpacingSpanner #'base-shortest-duration = #whatever
  }
}

Cheers,
MS