Re: System spacing for Certain

[Aaron Hill]

On 2019-01-16 2:04 pm, Reggie wrote:
> Please can you help me? I cannot move just ONE staff in a system, it's
> moving THE system as a unit which is wrong. I am so sad. What did I 
> break?
> How difficult is it to just move ONE staff without moving anything else 
> in
> the score pages? I just want to learn how to adjust the middle staff 
> not
> system as example here.

Wow... no wonder you're having trouble.  I just tried to work through 
the relevant section of the documentation [1] and found that it largely 
does not work as stated.  Well, to be more specific, I could get some 
partial results using 2.18.2 via lilybin.com, however my local copy of 
2.19.82 fails to render the examples as documented.  There are 
definitely some bugs here that need to be addressed, but let us move 
that discussion to another thread.

[1]: 
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.19/Documentation/notation/explicit-staff-and-system-positioning

Getting back to your issue at hand, there are some options.  Firstly, 
the property (and only property) you want to control is 
alignment-distances.  That one appears to be the only one that can 
reliably apply to an individual staff within a system.  Consider the 
following:

%%%%
\version "2.19.82"
\layout { indent = 0 }
<<
  \new Staff \repeat unfold 6 b'1
  \new Lyrics \repeat unfold 3 \lyricmode
    { Lo4 -- rem ip -- sum do8 -- lor sit a -- met2 }

  \new Staff <<
    \new Voice {
      s1*2 \break
      \overrideProperty 
Score.NonMusicalPaperColumn.line-break-system-details
        #'((alignment-distances . (5 15)))
      s1*2 \break
      s1*2 \break
    }

    \new Voice \repeat unfold 24 b'4
  >>

  \new Staff \repeat unfold 12 b'2
> >
%%%%

This example will look odd but it is to show a critical point.  When 
setting the alignment-distances, you must be careful with the values you 
use.  Too small of a value will result in overlapping as can be seen.  
It is important to note that non-staff lines such as lyrics do not count 
here.  The distance you are specifying is relative to the prior staff.

Because of that, I would consider the approach above rather fragile.  It 
may end up working for you, but be aware that it will take continued 
maintenance when other aspects of the music change.  As such, here is 
another option to consider:

%%%%
\version "2.19.82"
\layout { indent = 0 }
verticalSpacer = -\markup \with-color #red \draw-line #'(0 . 8)
<<
  \new Staff \repeat unfold 6 b'1
  \new Lyrics \repeat unfold 3 \lyricmode
    { Lo4 -- rem ip -- sum do8 -- lor sit a -- met2 }

  \new Staff <<
    \new Voice {
      s1*2 \break
      s1*2_\verticalSpacer \break
      s1*2 \break
    }

    \new Voice \repeat unfold 24 b'4
  >>

  \new Staff \repeat unfold 12 b'2
> >
%%%%

All we are doing here is using some dummy markup to create a placeholder 
object to force LilyPond to space things how we want.  Note that I 
colored the object red so it would be more clear where the placeholder 
object is.  This would be a good idea while you are working on the 
piece, but for the final version you would replace "\with-color #red" 
with "\transparent".

The advantage of a placeholder is that all of the elements of the score 
still remain relative to each other.  Should changes to the music cause 
it to reflow, you have less work to do to maintain desired spacing.  I 
also think this technique gives you more control.


-- Aaron Hill

spacing.ex1.png
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spacing.ex2.png
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