> I've tried for quite some time now to get Lily to print my music on
> letter-size paper, but it always ends up cutting off the top of the sheet
> (i.e. the margin is set at -2" or something). If I leave all the paper
> settings at the default (which I assume is A4), I can see everything on
> the page, but the top margin is way too small (it cuts off the page
> number). So either way, it's not good. How on earth can I get Lily to
> print something nicely, at the right position on the right paper size?
> And yes, I've looked at the documentation, many times.
The problem is that there are several places to specify the paper
size. If you use ly2dvi -pletter, the paper size will be set
correctly in the call to LaTeX but the actual height and width
of what's typeset on the paper will not change.
The correct way is to specify it in the Mudela file, but you
have to read the fine print of the Documentation to find out
how to do it. It turns out the you have to add the following
two lines somewhere at the top of your file:
\paper{ papersize = "letter";}
\include "paper20.ly"
Then, both LaTeX and ly2dvi will find out that you use
Letter size paper and the width and height of the typeset
material will be changed in the corresponding way.
(There's no need to use the -p flag to ly2dvi.)
It is clumsy to have to include paper20.ly, but it's
because Lilypond includes all its header files before
you get a chance to intercept with any settings in
your input. If you want to change the Lilypond default,
edit the file declarations.ly, changing "a4" to "letter".
However, there's one more link in the chain that may fail.
Even if ly2dvi produces a correct .dvi file, your dvips
may be configured to produce an A4 Postscript file.
If you look in the generated .ps file, you'll find a line
%%PaperSize: A4
or
%%PaperSize: Letter
Good luck
/Mats
