Re: Overriding a global declaration

[David Wright]

On Tue 06 Aug 2019 at 07:25:21 (-0700), John McWilliam wrote:
> Windows 10, Lilypond 2.18.2, Friscobaldi 3.0.1
> 
> Unfortunately, nobody seems able to help me with this one. 
> 
> I have a collection of tunes in a \book structure with a global-staff-size
> of 18. One of the tunes, however, spills over onto the next page and I want
> to reduce it's size to fit into the page without changing the format of the
> other tunes. I have tested what would work and found that 14 is feasible. I
> have searched the forum and tried introducing a \layout section within the
> tune score:
> 
> \layout {
>         \context {\Staff \with {
>         fontSize = #-2
>         \override StaffSymbol #'staff-space = #(magstep -2)}
> }}
> 
> This reduced the size of the staff + notes spacing the lines vertically and
> not giving the extra space to the overflow (1 line). I then added to the top
> level of my file, \paper section:
> 
> \paper {
>     ragged-bottom = ##t
>     bottom-margin = 0\mm
>     between-system-padding = #0.1
>     between-system-space = #0.1
> }
> 
> .....but this did not change anything. \magnifyStaff seemed an interesting
> option, however, my version of Lilypond returned an error on compilation so
> perhaps this only works in later versions.
> 
> I'd be most grateful of assistance in solving this impass.

In the past, I've circumvented this impasse by setting the document in
a globally smaller font so that the offending page just fits. Then I
used pdftk¹ to substitute the appropriate shrunken page for the one in
the main document. The only extra care needed is to make sure that the
smaller font doesn't squeeze the score onto fewer pages elsewhere and
screw up the page numbering. Mine were through composed pieces so this
was an issue, but it sounds as if your tune collection would not have
that problem.

¹ I don't know whether pdftk costs money for a Windows version.

Cheers,
David.