Best practice for parts with varying number of staves

[Urs Liska]

Hi all,

I'm facing the mountain of a huge orchestral score, and I think it's a
good idea to get a few things right before starting to climb. Lacking
experience with this type of score I will probably have to ask a few
times ...

Some parts vary the number of staves along the way (for example the
violas are written on one up to four(!) staves). And I'm not sure what
the most efficient approach to this is.

While entering the music I respect the line breaking of the original
score, so it would be easy to just start and stop new staves when it
happens in the model. But when I switch to LilyPond's line breaking this
will surely break - the added temporary staves often start with some
measures of rests of course.

Of course I will use \RemoveEmptyStaves, but that won't help me
automatically.

a)
I could just enter it as I encounter it (i.e. start additional staves
when they start in the engraver's copy).
When switching to individual line breaking I could just see what happens
and add or remove empty bars as needed.
-> looks like a very awkward messing with manual changes later.

aa)
I could start additional staves when their content starts and see what
happens later.
-> looks only _slightly_ less awkward.

b)
I could add some 'padding' empty measures around each additional staff
to ensure that when the music starts in the middle of a system there are
empty measures available from the start of the system.
-> This might work but seems awkward in the entering phase because I
have to start/stop the additional staves at arbitrary points. This is
made worse by the fact that I have split the parts into short segments
(corresponding to the original rehearsal marks), which would probably
mean that I have to start a staff in a segment where it won't be used at
all.

c)
I could initially create the score with all possible staves and just let
\RemoveEmptyStaves do its job (well, that's what it is intended for ...)
-> But that would mean the extra overhead of filling the extra staves
with rests for all the numerous pages where they aren't needed.

How would you approach this scenario?

Thanks for any opinion.

Urs