This e-mail is addressed mainly to people that understand MusiXTeX,
especially the brand of it that comes out of PMX, and LaTeX, better
than I do. That's quite a lot of people, I hope.
I spend maybe half my music typesetting time trying to tweak vertical
spacing with the aid of commands that all seem to conflict in practice.
What I want is simple: full control over the exact distance between staves
in a system, but with the distance between systems adjusted automatically
to fill the page.
Thus, the M-Tx command (for a system with two staves)
Space: 2 4
should mean: make the staves exactly 2\Interligne further apart than some
fixed default, one that does not change depending on how full the page is;
and separate each system from the next by at least 4\Interligne more
than some other fixed default.
The Space command translates (via intermediate macros \mtxInterInstrument
and \mtxStaffBottom in mtx.tex) to
\setinterinstrument{1}{2\Interligne}
\staffbotmarg 4\Interligne
Both these macros could be improved: I think that the first only
works properly for single-staff instruments (not a problem because the
piano is usually at the bottom) and the second maybe should rather be
\def\atnextline{\stafftopmarg 4\Interligne}
(or should that \def be \gdef?). Maybe neither macro says what I mean.
And maybe one could fiddle with redefining \alaligne. I'm getting
a little out of my depth here.
Now I can usually (having had some experience) get things to come
out OK with plain MusiXTeX, by fiddling with the numbers in Space.
Unfortunately, if I fiddle with those numbers I also have to change
the position of the lyrics. There is not too much predictability in
the process, unless the score happens to have exactly the same layout,
including number of lyrics lines, as another one that already is debugged.
But the moment that the score goes into LaTeX things no longer look the same.
My current technique for LaTeX is to use an environment "score" defined
this way (simplified from mtxlatex.sty):
\newcommand{\startscore}{\let\SmuF\startmuflex\let\EmuF\endmuflex
\textwidth 193mm\textheight 270mm
\oddsidemargin -15mm\evensidemargin -15mm\topmargin -20mm
\let\startmuflex\relax\let\endmuflex\relax\let\bye\relax%
\let\nopagenumbers\relax\musicparskip}
\newenvironment{score}{\startscore}{}
Inside \begin{score}...\end{score} I then input the files produced by PMX.
I am doubtful about several things here: how effective are attempts
to change page layout parameters inside an environment, should I have
\musicparskip or not, etc. And mainly: why does the LaTeX vertical
spacing come out so very different from the plain TeX spacing, and
how can I avoid that?
Dirk
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