Re: Vertical spacing for fixed y-offset of systems *calculated from top staff line*?

[Keith OHara]

Dear Trevor, and others writing with fixed staff-spacing,

Trevor Bača <trevorbaca <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
> \paper { system-system-spacing =
>        #'((basic-distance . 50)
>           (minimum-distance . 0)
>           (padding . -10)
>           (stretchability . 0))
[...]

I use the (complete) formatting from your post, with music that lasts a few 
pages.  For a simple page filling example, I used
  reps = 50  \new PianoStaff <<
  \new Staff \repeat unfold \reps {g1 c'''1}
  \new Staff \repeat unfold \reps {c'''1 g1} >>
and I saw
 warning: cannot fit music on page: overflow is 3.300242
 warning: compressing music to fit

I think the "compressing music to fit" is the reason for 

> 4. staff-staff-spacing minimum-distance [] needed 
> to be greater than [] 25.
> [...] values smaller than that were allowing the two staves to
> collapse considerably closer to each other in a 'nonlinear' way 

I was confused by (minimum-distance . 0), because this seems to request
that systems be moved very close when needed.   I think the page-breaker is 
similarly confused, and tried to put more systems on the page than would fit 
with 50-staff-space separation between them.


Does this work better for you (maybe with smaller numbers) ?

\paper {
  system-system-spacing =
  #'((minimum-distance . 30)
     (basic-distance . 30)
     (stretchability . 0))
  top-system-spacing =
  #'((minimum-distance . 15)
     (basic-distance . 15)
     (padding . -10)
     (stretchability . 0))
}
\layout {
  \context {
    \Score
    \override VerticalAxisGroup #'staff-staff-spacing =
    #'((minimum-distance . 20)
       (basic-distance . 20)
       (stretchability . 0))
  }
}
This has the advantage of actually giving me the 20 staff-spaces between 
staves.  You could leave out the lines with (basic-distance . x) for your case 
of completely-fixed spacing.

My motivation for asking is that I want to allow spacings to compress down to 
minimum-distance, even when stretchability=0, for things like piano pedal lines 
where I don't want the line to stretch away, but can accept it coming closer to 
fit more music on one page.
However, I don't write nearly as much music as you so I don't want to mess up 
anything you depend on.