Definitively seems, then, that this is the wrong way around - stem lengths
in any case are flexible and can be shortened or lengthened within
reasonable limits as necessary to avoid wrong beam positions, which are far
worse. Forbidden beam endings ("quants") [i.e. anything other than the
three positions I listed) should be avoided when IN the staff. Outside the
staff it is a fair bit freer as the main issue - it being harder to read,
and poor printing or poor copies potentially creating an unreadable mess -
is obviously not an issue when there are no staff lines to worry about.I've tried the regtest exemple with beam damping set to #2, the beams are far better but there are a few which do end up with a beam in a space: [image: image.png] Would in my opinion definitively be worth raising up the issue in the bug tracker. Cheers, Aleksa Am Fr., 19. Dez. 2025 um 13:39 Uhr schrieb Luise Flesch < [email protected]>: > Hi Aleksa! Thanks for the answer :) > > I've been digging into everything (and I MEAN everything. I think the only > place I didn't look for information was in the freaking subreddit) lilypond > online to see if there was anything I could do, and I think I've found the > issue. See this regtest (beam-quant-32nd.ly): > [image: image.png] > "Stem lengths take precedence over beam quants" (I think I understand what > beam quanting is? The quants are like, the points of the staff that the > beam ends go on. so forbidden quants are beam ends ending up in the middle > of a staff space. might be misinterpreting though). So this is on > *purpose*, to prioritise good stem lengths over good beam slants (and > indeed, you can see beam ends in staff spaces like at least 3 times in this > very regtest). Why, I don't heckin know lmao. I have not found any > workarounds anywhere. Uh here's a list of all the places I remember looking: > > the Known Issues parts of both NotRef and Internals; all regtests to do > with beams; all properties to do with beams; all properties to do with > stems; all properties to do with quanting; the user mailing list; the > developer mailing list; the issue tracker; the source code (just a little, > very unsuccessfully) > > I've not found a solution/workaround anywhere in those places :( for now > I'm just manually setting beams when necessary > > Thanks again! > Luise >
