Silas Brown wrote >My program in its present form cannot do this unless there's some way >of getting M-Tx to accept | signs at the start of lines without >complaining about an empty bar. A preprocessor (Silas' program) for a preprocessor (M-Tx) for a preprocessor (PMX) !!! Boggles the mind. >Is there a way of getting M-Tx/PMX/etc to automatically choose the >best number of measures per line? I assume you mean "best average number of measures per line," because some measures will always have more shorter-duration notes than others, and they require more horizontal space. Speaking for PMX, the answer to the question is no. It works the other way around: You specify the total number of systems (and number of pages) and it will distribute everything nicely over that number of systems (assuming there are no forced line breaks). It is very easy to iterate on the total number systems (and pages) to find what looks best. Once the number of systems is specified, there is also a rarely used way to subtly alter the horizontal spacing on lines that are still crowded. You can globally specify the minimum allowable horizontal gap between noteheads (the default is 0.3 notehead widths). On lines where the shortest-duration notes are crowded, PMX tries to adjust all the wider gaps to accommodate this. As a line gets ever more crowded, it will keep "flattening" the range of gaps until all gaps are equal regardless of note duration. If it still cannot meet the minimum gap criterion, it sends a message that the line is too crowded, but keeps on truckin' anyhow, letting musixflx mop things up. --Don
