Hi Don,
thanks for your exhaustive and as always helpful explanations. My
experience is also that with some experimentation one gets finally a
decent solution. Obviously I managed to create a vshrink situation.
Maybe one could put a warning into the next version documentation, that
under certain conditions AI does not work as expected.
Regards,
Dieter
Am 22.08.2016 um 09:27 schrieb Don Simons:
I’m afraid I still cannot confidently provide a checklist of
everything that affects PMX’s internal calculation of \interstaff.
It’s very complicated, I worked it out a very long time ago, and I
didn’t document or comment it very well in the code. If anyone cares
to look in the FORTRAN, be my guest. There are some intriguing
comments at line 19170 of pmxab.for ver 2.74, but the operations are
scattered throughout the code.
I will however offer some comments about Dieter’s issue and about
vertical spacing in general.
First, I’m virtually certain that using npages=0 had nothing to do
with it. In all my tests on Dieter’s 2-system example, I’ve gotten
exactly the same results with (npages,nsystems) = (0,4) as with (1,2).
When PMX sets up a score, it computes a value of \interstaff based on
how much vertical space is used by individual staves, titles, and some
other items. It tries to set \interstaff so that when TeX spreads
things out over the full page height (after \eject) it looks OK. If
there is lots of blank vertical space, as there would be with just one
or two systems in a normal page, then the computed \interstaff would
come out unpleasantly big, and PMX goes into “vshrink” mode, setting
\interstaff to 10 and using \vfill before \eject, thereby grouping
everything at the top of the page. (I think the cutoff \interstaff is
20 but there’s some uncertainty there). In vshrink mode, AI does not
seem to have any effect. One way to check if PMX is using vshrink mode
is to look in the tex file and see if \interstaff is 10. If this
happens and you still want to adjust vertical spacing, you have to get
out of vshrink mode. There are two ways to do that. One is to issue
the Av command. Then you will get things spread out more evenly over
the full page height. \interstaff may come out bigger than you like,
but now you can change it with AI. But if you only have two systems,
you might also want less vertical space between them. I don’t know how
to make PMX do that directly; you’d have to resort to inline tex,
possibly inserting a \vfill at the end of the page before \eject. A
second way to avoid vshrink is to make the page height smaller. There
will always be some smaller page height that will coerce PMX not to go
into “vshrink” mode. Then you can use AI, and you’ll also have reduced
the vertical space between staves.
PMX’s vertical spacing decisions should work fine, with no tinkering,
for just about any ordinary music without lyrics, and you shouldn’t
have to worry about anything in the previous paragraph. PMX’s
automatic choice to go into vshrink mode will make sparse pages look
just fine, with a few systems grouped at the top. The problem Dieter
came upon was caused by the need to make room for lyrics in the space
between the two staves in a system, on a page with just two systems of
two staves each. And even that problem went away when he added a
title, instrument, and author, because those used enough extra
vertical space to avoid going into “vshrink” mode.
--Don Simons
*From:*Don Simons [mailto:dsim...@roadrunner.com]
*Sent:* Saturday, August 20, 2016 1:58 PM
*To:* 'Werner Icking Music Archive' <tex-music@tug.org>
*Subject:* RE: [Tex-music] Vertical spacing: AI-Option in PMX
Dieter and Andre—
This issue is more complicated than it seems, and I’m afraid it’s been
so long since I did the programming that it going to take me some more
time to sort it out. The good news is that if you’re making a score,
it’s very easy to experiment and you can almost always find a set of
inputs that give you the vertical spacing you want.
One thing I’ve noticed so far is this. Andre’s suggestion about
changing (npages,nsystems) from (0,4) to (1,4) does lead to different
vertical spacing, but it also leads to 4 systems on the page rather
than 2, and that in itself completely changes the game. I don’t think
npages=0 by itself changes the way AI operates, but it certainly can
(and does in the example) influence the number of systems, and if it
does change the number of systems, then of course it will change the
vertical spacing.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that if you remove the instrument,
title, and composer from Dieter’s latest file, and don’t change
anything else, you get a major change in the vertical spacing.
I’ll report back when I’ve had a chance to review this more thoroughly.
--Don Simons
*From:*TeX-Music [mailto:tex-music-boun...@tug.org] *On Behalf Of
*Andre Van Ryckeghem
*Sent:* Friday, August 19, 2016 8:48 PM
*To:* Werner Icking Music Archive <tex-music@tug.org
<mailto:tex-music@tug.org>>
*Subject:* Re: [Tex-music] Vertical spacing: AI-Option in PMX
I believe the
----
% npages nsystems musicsize fracindent
0 <----
4
20
0.05
-----
does not obey the rules anymore.
I tried
----
% npages nsystems musicsize fracindent
1
4
20
0.05
-----
with
AbepI.6 and AbepI1.0 and all seems to be normal
Andre
*From:*Dieter <mailto:d.gloet...@web.de>
*Sent:*Friday, August 19, 2016 3:08 PM
*To:*Werner Icking Music Archive <mailto:tex-music@tug.org>
*Subject:*[Tex-music] Vertical spacing: AI-Option in PMX
Hi,
I do have trouble in working with the AI Option of PMX for interstaff
spacing.
According to Noack:
========================================================================================
I understand that \interstaff will be multiplied by x, when I use this
option. But what I find is for a certain configuration, that
the staff distance in a piano piece becomes bigger, when I set x to
0.5 insted of 1.0.
x = 0.5
x = 1.0
I am quite happy with the x =0.5 solution, but I would be happy to
gain some understanding of what is happening.
Regards, Dieter
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