I notated a piece with many variation.
I want every variation to start at a new line, so I checked "force system break".
It works, of course, but the problem is that the line just before the break is often very short, sometimes even only a single bar with a single rest, so that bar is stretched so as to "justify" it.
Any idea on how to avoid that without resorting to post-editing or other exotic solutions?
Force system breaks in previous bars - E.G. force a break every, say, 3 bars or so and see how things space out.
To take it a bit further, suppose your composition is 16 bars long, you could force a system break every 4 bars and get 4 * 4 bar staves. Or maybe you need to arra\nge things a bit differently using irregular numbers of bars - print preview is your friend here.
Digital whiteout. The "g" character in 'Webdings' is especially useful.
Lilypond calls this "ragged right". I wish Noteworthy had it. Even if it is not used for final output, it is helpful to know just how much space is required in each line.
Lawrie,
of course your idea works, but I fear the moment in which a friend asks me: "I can't read it so small, print it bigger, please" or "compact it so it fits in less pages, please".
Rick,
I know what we mean with "digital whiteout" (I already asked long ago :-) but I'm not able to grasp your suggestion. Could you please elaborate?
Today I feel more dumb than usual, sorry.
Thems the breaks :)
Rick is suggesting covering the extended bar with white objects thus making the staff visually shorter than those that preceed it. E.G a 1 bar staff that is only about as long as 1 bar in any other staff.
The problem is the stretching due to justification.
If, for example, I have the last bar before the break with only three notes, then I have a note at about 1/4 of the page width, another about at 1/2 and the third at about 3/4 of the page width.
I don't see how "blanking" could solve my problem without adding some fake items between the last bar and the break.
Or I'm still missing something?
You would want at least a bar line, but following that, place the white text with preserve width turned on. I'm pretty sure that would be sufficient.
That is because you need to add a fake item between the bar and the break.
Try something like this:
Now I got it!
Thank you, mates.
IMO, this should suffice, but does not. At least not with NWC 2.1
NWC seems to interpret 'Justify:Right|Placement:AtNextNote' as 'Somewhat Before Next Note/Bar'