Automatic vertical spacing when *some* values are fixed

[Urs Liska]

Hi all,

recently 
(http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2018-01/msg00576.html) 
I asked about how to use the vertical spacing variables to force the top 
system to an absolute position, which I could achieve with the 
basic-distance and minimal-distance of top-system-spacing and its 
stretchability set to 0.

However, this setting proves to have serious side-effects for vertical 
spacing in general as it seems to encourage LilyPond to squeeze much 
more music on a page. I will have a few questions related to this 
challenge, but I'll start with the most pressing (sorry for the pun) one 
with this email.

Attached you'll find a score with some quartet music in it. You can 
compile it with the vertical margins set through top-margin and 
bottom-margin or through the paper spacing variables.

With the paper variables (which is also the saved state in the 
attachment) LilyPond squeezes three systems on the page, severely 
compressing the music, while with the regular top-margin/bottom-margin 
settings only two systems are put on the page.
(Behaviour is basically the same in 2.18 and 2.19.80.)

My suspicion is that when forcing *some* stretchability values to zero 
the other flexible variables wreak havoc.

Is there a way to force these absolute top and bottom values and still 
have acceptable (or even beautiful) overall vertical spacing?

For your reference: I need this because I want to strictly align the top 
and bottom system of a score to the type area of the surrounding text 
document (this is also where the strange values are from, they are 
calculated from the LaTeX document).

Any suggestions?

Thanks
Urs

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