Re: Conditional paper block

[David Wright]

On Tue 12 Dec 2017 at 13:34:18 (-0500), Br. Samuel Springuel wrote:
> On 2017-12-12 12:08 PM, David Wright wrote:
> >You can set the default paper-size with a -d option in the LP command
> >line. See p10 of the "Usage" manual (2.19.80 page ref.).
> 
> That works perfect from the command line.  Is it possible to get
> Frescobaldi to apply this option when running LilyPond?  I tried
> modifying the LilyPond command in the preferences to add this
> option, but that appears to break the ability of Frescobaldi to find
> and run LilyPond properly.

I'm not a Frescobaldi user, so others might like to comment.
I'm afraid I can only make suggestions.

I set my paper/margins from .ily files in my library of suchlike.

$ cat LilyLib/Letter.ily 
\version "2.19.49" % 2013-11-11

\paper {
  #(set-paper-size "letter")
}
$ cat LilyLib/margins/Margins-10-15.ily 
\version "2.19.49" % 2013-11-11

\paper {
  top-margin = 15
  left-margin = 10
  right-margin = 10
  bottom-margin = 10
}
$ 

So you could include a line like
\include "ThisProject'sName.ily"
containing these parameters, for which you switch the contents
according to whether you are working on drafts or the finished
product. This switching could be done with the actual file
contents or through symlinks (if on a linux filesystem).

> […] A4 and Letter are close enough that I wouldn't have
> necessarily noticed the difference when examining the draft on the
> screen.

If you're used to A4 (as I was), you notice the squatness of Letter
when displaying an entire page. But it's quite an important difference
if you are trying to control the page count. I've shifted from
maximising width usage (clefs and staff labels even getting
hole-punched) to squeezing the top/bottom margins (shrinking titles,
tightening system spacings). Unfortunately, some printers won't print
right up to the end of the paper (because of the gripper roller?)
which exacerbates the problem on Letter.

Cheers,
David.