Re: Fitting as many lines as possible on a page

[Anthony W. Youngman]

In message <address@hidden>, Reinhold 
Kainhofer <address@hidden> writes
> On Freitag, 30. Januar 2009 23:37:28 Tim Yang wrote:
> > It doesn't work. I set the page-count as 2 and Lilypond still uses 3
> > pages. I think it is because somehow Lilypond thinks these lines don't
> > fit in 2 pages but in fact there is a lot of space left.
>
> Yes, currently the vertical page layouting algorithm of lilypond is sub-
> optimal. Lilypond reserves 10% of the total space to make sure it does not
> overprint staves. This means that 10% of the page will always be wasted...
> Unfortunately, there is no easy way around this for now, until someone starts
> working on the vertical staff layouting seriously...
ARRGGGHHHH

This is a TERRIBLE feature!!!

Is there any way to disable this? To me, a page turn can easily be the 
difference between a piece of music that's playable, and one that isn't. 
To discover that lily is wasting 10% of the page is a nasty surprise.

A page turn can easily take 30 seconds when you're sitting on a 
bandstand, and if your music is in a lyre then turning pages just isn't 
on (especially when you stick out like a sore thumb because you're in 
the front rank!)

(Actually, this is probably my biggest complaint about lily. I know 
"beautiful" and "playable" tend to go together, but sometimes 
"beautiful" and "practical" don't play nicely together and lily 
overemphasises the beauty. I *need* music to fit either on A5, or one or 
two sides of A4. I'll accept a hefty hit in other areas to avoid that 
third page, and often do have to accept it in nasty tweaks to force the 
music to fit.)

Cheers,
Wol
--
Anthony W. Youngman - address@hidden