Re: page margins

[Janek Warchoł]

2014/1/13 Noeck <address@hidden>:
> Hi,
>
> what is the reason that the default margins are so small?

Someone should do 'git blame' to see the commit that did this.
..actually, judging by the link you provided
(http://lilypond.1069038.n5.nabble.com/default-margins-tp44740p44741.html)
the reason was probably to have line-width the same as in music
published by respected publishers, which uses *different* paper size.

> They are (top/botton, left/right | inner/outer in mm):
> 5/6, 10/10 | 10/20
>
> If I compare to printed scores, they are usually larger:
> Edition Peters:  10/12, 17/17
> Boosey & Hawkes: 11/24, 14/14
>
> I understand the goal to save space for the music content.
> But there are some drawbacks:
>
> - most printers cannot print so close to the paper edge
>   (especially top/bottom)
>     - this either cuts into the printed page content
>     - or requires to scale the content while printing
> - it looks too squeezed (cf. the simple example below)
> - it is non-standard compared to most publishers

I agree, this was bothering me for ages.

> In addition the top-markup-spacing is 0 which makes the title look very
> squashed to the top. I would prefer something around 4 or 5 mm (or one
> text line height).
>
> I see that this has been discussed before in 2009:
> http://lilypond.1069038.n5.nabble.com/default-margins-tp44740p44741.html
> with margin measurments for many publishers but without a visible
> conclusion for Lilypond.
> There is now (or some time ago) a Mutopia discussion whether larger
> margins should be enforced or not:
> https://github.com/chrissawer/The-Mutopia-Project/issues/141
> but I think if LilyPond delivered printable default settings, this would
> be the best solution.
>
> I have no reference book on this at hand, but my proposal is:
> 10/15 15/15 | 10/20
> and a top-markup-spacing basic-distance of about 4\mm.

I agree with left/right margins, but not top/bottom.  Top/bottom are
more tricky because you *want* to allow the page to compress when
there's really a lot of content; so the adjustment should be done
using compressible top-markup-spacing and the like.

Keep in mind that the tagline is present on just one page, and the
bottom "whitespace area" is quite different from bottom-margin because
of tagline.

> Could this be added to the issue tracker?

Let's first have an agreed-upon proposal.

I suggest the following way forward: let's discuss horizontal margins
separately from vertical ones.  It should be a no-brainer to increase
horizontal margins at least to 12 mm (although 15 seems indeed quite
ok for me).  Depending on how long it would take Kieren to get to this
(2 weeks or 2 months?) we should or should not wait for him.  Since
we've just released 2.18, there should be no problem in making
decisions quite swiftly.

Unfortunately i won't be able to do much more here, but you have my support!

j