Re: default margins

[Graham Percival]

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 09:04:29AM -0700, Mark Polesky wrote:
> 
> > From: Graham Percival 
> > A priori, I would say that changing margins are **not** a good
> > idea... but since professional typesetters do it, and I never
> > noticed myself in 25 years of music-playing, I have to admit that
> > maybe it's a good idea.
> 
> I don't get the sense that professional typesetters changed
> margins **intentionally**. I assume it had to do with the
> mechanical process. As an example, I've read that some 
> measurements were traditionally taken by swinging a compass 
> back and forth across a page...

I don't know about that.  My brother was convinced that they *did*
do it deliberately (at least in the case of vertical margins) for
page turns; he was surprised that this wasn't one of the basic
features in lilypond, given our care about producing great
manuscripts.  He's only a violinist, though; no experience at
composition or typesetting.

Unfortunately I'm approximately 13 thousand km away from my
scores, so I can't check.  But it makes sense, and would explain
why I find much more variation in the space between systems in
lilypond (with good page turns) than in orchestral music (with
good page turns).  I mean, there aren't *that* many rests in cello
and violin music; it's not like we're wind instruments.  :)


Thanks for the links; I'll check them out later (probably in 2
months).

Cheers,
- Graham