Has anyone figured out how to force a ghost system so that spacing throughout a score can be uniform?
I'm laying out the performance score of a clarinet trio (clarinet, cello, and piano). Most of the way through the score, there are three systems per page. At one point, however, to facilitate page turning by the pianist, I've forced a page break one system early, so that on that page there are only two systems. Page vertical justification is set to "on", so NWC obediently justifies the two-system page vertically, resulting in much more white space between, above, and below the systems than there is on the other fourteen pages. It works, but it looks - uh - unprofessional. (I was about to say "like crap.") Forcing an extra "ghost" system onto that page - i.e., a system with nothing in it, including staff lines - would solve the problem without requiring a change in the program, but so far I haven't been able to figure out a way to do that. Anyone else?
(A thought for you, Eric: the logical way to handle this, it seems to me, would be simply to always have the "force a new system" command actually, well, force a new system. If the program sees two system breaks in a row, it should logically force a new system twice, with the first of the two new systems being empty. This doesn't currently happen. Any chance it can be included in the next update?)
Maybe this is a silly suggestion... but why not turn off the vertical justification setting, and set the page and staff margins to give the same effect as though the setting were on?
Use boundaries
Mike, the problem is limited to one page. You can't set page margins for one page only. Rick, yeah, I thought of that and will probably do it. Some experimentation will be required, though - I was just hoping there was an easier way. A ghost system would put everything where it belongs automatically.
Well, maybe not everything....
You should be able to apply a larger low boundary in the section of the lowest staff that applies to the second system on that page. You should only need two extra boundary changes to make that work; the first occupies the space of your theoretical ghost system, and the second restores the normal spacing. Done correctly, you probably wouldn't need the actual page break, as that should just happen on its own.
I accomplished this with the following clip:
!NoteWorthyComposerClip(2.751,Single)
|Boundary|Style:NewSize|Lower:100
|Note|Dur:8th|Pos:0
|Boundary|Style:Reset
!NoteWorthyComposerClip-End
That should work. IMO, NWC would be improved if the Boundary items didn't need to be separated by note (or other duration item.) Better still, if only one Boundary item could be used that could be flagged as applying only to the measure in which it appears.