Re: Reducing top margin for a single page in a score

[Aaron Hill]

On 2019-02-04 4:06 am, Andrew Bernard wrote:
> Hi Aaron,
>
> Thanks for taking so much care with this answer. But there's a problem. 
> The
> viola solo in this (New Complexity) score for a quartet is incredibly 
> dense
> and fills the whole page to the point that I have to have zero bottom
> margin. There's very high ledger notes and very low ones, so that 
> staves
> are large of necessity. I'd do it as a book part, but the problem here 
> is
> that everything in this score ties across bars and pages, and I don't 
> see
> how to carry ties across voices between bookparts. This is the basis on
> which my query was formed.

I must confess I have no working knowledge of New Complexity, but is 
there no way for you to use ottava to reduce the extents of ledger 
lines?  This could potentially reduce the overall vertical footprint of 
the music without needing to adjust margins.

You mention there is no bottom margin, but does that mean the entire 
page full of music?  If so, there is little to be done save for scaling 
the music down or using larger paper.

But assuming there is still a top margin, that means there is space to 
be used and distributed across the page.  Stretchability allows you to 
set the actual margins to much smaller than you are currently using but 
end up with effectively large margins because LilyPond puts the excess 
space where you want it.  This being automatic means it is ideal for 
scores with many pages as you do not need manual effort (other than 
reviewing for correctness).

I did not mention it before; but you can adjust the stretchability so 
that LilyPond favors the top margin over the bottom if that is your 
intention.  Take my example from before and try lowering the 
stretchability of last-bottom-spacing a little at a time.


-- Aaron Hill