Re: Trouble getting my page layout just right

[Cameron Horsburgh]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 07:46:16AM +1100, Cameron Horsburgh wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 05:00:17PM +0100, Mats Bengtsson wrote:
> 
> Hmm, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks it's strange! And it's
> nothing recent either---it's been a problem since I first put the
> score together, which seems to be four years ago.
> 
> I've uploaded a score with annotate-spacing
> on. http://web.netcall.com.au/horsburgh/Downloads/entertainer-annotated.pdf
> 
> I've tried that before, but I couldn't really make head or tail of
> it. The numbers tell me what I can already see, but they don't give me
> many clues as to why they're changing.
> 
> Thanks for your help,
> 

Okay, I've had a closer look at the annotated score ( 
http://web.netcall.com.au/horsburgh/Downloads/entertainer-annotated.pdf )

It seems that the property I want to control is 'Y-extent'. That is the 
distance from the highest point of the highest elemnt of the top staff to the 
lowest point of the lowest element of the bottom staff. This number is quite 
different on each page.

However, there are two other numbers which stand out as possibly relevant. They 
are staff-refpoint-extent and extent-estimate.

staff-refpoint-extent goes from the middle line of the top staff to the middle 
line of the Bb Bass staff. For some reason it misses the percussion staff 
(presumably because it's a DrumStaff and not a Staff?)

extent-estimate is less clear. I've got no real idea what it does, and it does 
something quite different on each page. In every case it seems to start at the 
height of the highest element on the highest staff, but goes down an apparently 
arbitrary distance. In some cases it goes centimetres below the bottom staff, 
yet in others it only goes down as far as the fourth-to-bottom staff. The 
length of the line itself is different on every page.

In short, I'm stumped!

Any ideas?

-- 

Cameron Horsburgh

Blog: http://spiritcry.wordpress.com/