Segnos, Codas, and Really Crap Formatting

[lilypond]

(Posted to developer rather than user, because I know this stuff
doesn't work, and it appears to me it's a design issue not 
bugs/user-error.)

I know lily is written more for orchestral music, and I'm using it for
band music, but isn't it the aim of lily "to be the best for ALL music"?

Enough of the blurb - the piece I'm working on at the moment looks
AWFUL. I've already moaned on the "user" list that I couldn't get codas
and segnos on barlines - I've solved that now, it looks like it was a
combination of poor documentation and PEBKAC error. HOWEVER

I can't get my codas right. I want (as per normal practice) to have a
"missing system" between the main body of the music and the coda. No
problem putting a line-break in, but how do I put extra space in there
to make it stand out? Even worse! How do I mark it up correctly? What
I've tried to do is:

\markup { DS al Coda } \break \markup { Coda }

which doesn't work at all. The second markup means the first gets lost.
And if I manage to get them to combine in any way everything ends up
AFTER the line break! I'm guessing I could put a hidden bar in there,
but then that needs to go into all my "voice" parts - and seeing as I
tend to score parts as I need them that's not a good idea - I'll have
completely forgotten about it when I come to do another part in six
months time! Plus it'll probably stuff in a bar-line that shouldn't be
there... At the moment, I think I'll end up writing in the DS by hand :-(

And I know I moaned about this with 2.4, but lily just does not seem
able to handle music nicely when it fits on one (or two) page(s), which
is pretty much all the music I deal with! I'd much rather support and
use free software, not buy Sibelius or somesuch (I've bought Personal
Composer, and lily is SO much easier to use...) I could attach the pdf
when I get home, but it's terrible. Lily wants to cram the music into
five lines, and then leaves half the page empty ... I could tell it
"ragged bottom = false", but last time I tried that it merely increased
the gap between staves - which would make the cramped bars look even
worse! And then, having put in two line breaks, at the trio and the
coda, the formatting even gets worse still - the trio was two bars into
a line, so it squeezed them into the preceding lines and the result was
a load of percent repeat bars that were too small (the repeat symbol
spilled over the barline!).

It looks like, if I want this music to look half decent, I'm going to
have to specify ALL the line breaks myself! And, bearing in mind this is
typical of ALL the music I deal with, that's a lot of work I shouldn't
have to do. Lily prides itself in its blurb for "producing nicely
typeset music". I really don't like moaning like this, but this piece
I'm doing there's no way I want it on my music stand - let alone give it
to fellow musicians! Not unless I do a major "by hand" cleanup that
shouldn't be necessary!

I've mentioned it before. Lily calculates how many lines it needs to set
the music. Is there any way to get between this and the actual
typesetting, and say "never mind how many you think you need, use this
number"? If I can tell lily that it needs to use ten lines, all this
crappy formatting will go away (it actually looked quite good, when I
told it to use the line breaks in the original version - that was nine
lines. But my paper size is different and I thought I'd let lily do a
better job...).

Another issue with parts, and band parts in particular, is there's no
way to say "this HAS to fit". I'm sure you've had the experience of
music that spills onto a third page by just one line. Wouldn't it be
nice to say "fit this into two pages". The trouble with band music is
that sometimes turning a page isn't an option - it HAS to fit on one
page. Of A5. Again, all that would need is some way of getting inbetween
where lily calculates the space it needs, and over-riding that. If it
looks crap, the user can then try and clean up by juggling font sizes,
line-breaks etc, but at least if lily does a decent first approximation
that makes life easier (and having been in the situation where I just
COULDN'T persuade lily to cram that last line on the page, I would have
loved to have been able to say "Just DO IT!").

Cheers,
Wol