more on stretching the score

• Mar 14, 2021 - 09:57

Greetings
Often when I try to stretch the score, either by ctrl-} or by scaling (page settings) I get a ridiculous line with a single measure. using ctrl-{ doesn't help.
How can I set numbers of measures per line and number of lines per page?
thank you


Comments

answer to my first question: controling number of measures per page is done by Format --> Add/Remove System breaks.
Now How do I control number of lines per page?
thank you

To be clear, there is no setting for number of measures per line, or number of lines per page. MuseScore works like a word processor - it puts as much on a line, and as many lines on a page, as it can give current size settings. if you want fewer things on a line, use a line break. If you want fewer lines on a page, use a page break. If you want more to fit than your settings currently allow, you need to change your settings, but it's kind of up to you decide which. Maybe you want a bigger page, or smaller margins, or smaller staves, or closer note spacing, or close staff spacing - that's something you need to decide for yourself.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

thank you Marc Sabatella
I don't know how but those 2 items I noted as solutions did make changes in my score. It's not in the settings.
One is under format menu- add/remove system breaks helped in fixing the number of measures per line. Probably by inserting line breaks. The other is in staff properties (context menu) which again changed the number of lines per page probably by inserting automatically page breaks.
It is more convenient than breaks since it is not done on a certain line or page but on the whole score.
The phenomenon of having a line with one long measure as a result of stretching is really annoying and silly.
I call it a bug and I have some experience in programming.

In reply to by zivshosh

As I said, breaks can only force fewer measures to fit. They can't change the laws of physics and make more fit. The dialog you refer to adds breaks, so if you currently have more measures than you want on each line, adding breaks does the job. But you can't use that dialkoig to say you want, for instance, 47 measures per line. It just won't work. You'll get breaks every 47 bars, yes, but you won't get 47 bars all squished up onto a single line.

No idea what you mean about staff properties, there is really nothing relevant there except the scaling options, which will make a staff bigger or smaller and thus will change how many measures can fit. But that would almost never be the right way to do this, unless you are deliberately trying to make one staff bigger or smaller than the rest, or if you want the staff and elements attached directly to it bigger but not affect other elements that are score-wide. Useful for creating experimental notation, but something an ordinary user would ever want/need to do. The way to make the entire score bigger or small is in Page Settings.

I am not sure what bug you mean. Are you saying if you have a measure with a line break on it, you think MsueScore should ignore that break because surely you didn't mean to add that break? MuseScore is not in business of guessing what you might or night not have meant. If you have a measure with a break on it, MsueScore absolutely must end the line there - that is the whole purpose of the break.

Just
as
I
am
adding
breaks
after
each
word
here

and your web browser absolutely must display it that way, not second guess whether I should have added those breaks or not.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I succeeded in reducing measures per line from 5 to 4 and than increase back from 4 to 5 using add/remove system breaks under Format menu.
too many screen captures to prove it. I'll never want 47 meaures per line. Someone should be able to read the score and play it.
staff properties: click to select first measure of first instrument, say. right click (context menu) choose staff/part properties, and there in lines I succeeded again to change number of line in page (increase and decrease)
bug: when I tried to stretch the score either by ctrl-} or by format --> page settings --> scaling, I got many times
lines with one (1!) measure! this should not happen it was different from other lines for no apparent reason.
Luckily add/remove system breaks.
Would line break or page break on one point of the score have on effect on other lines or pages? probably no if musescore works like a word processor.
what I suggested works immediately throughout the score
thank you

In reply to by zivshosh

47 was picked as an extreme example, but the point remains - if your current settings only allow N measures on a given system, you need to change one or more settings to get even N+1 measures to fit. The stretch commands provide measure-by-measure override of the spacing, but there are still all the other settings I mentioned.

Again, as I explained, if you have a system break on a measure, then MuseScore absolutely must honor it, and almost certainly that is why you got a line with only one measure one it. But if you are convinced you have a measure with no system break and yet it still stretches to fill a system even though more measures would fit given your current settings, then in order to investigate, we would need you to attach your score and give precise steps to reproduce the issue,

For me it all works perfectly, so my guess there is still simply a misunderstanding, but maybe you have found a bug where in some specific rare corner case, things don't actually work right,. We can't investigate without the score and steps to reproduce the problem, though.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

(Aside: Yes, MS works like a word processor when musical notation is like text, and when musical notation is not like text, it doesn't. The very very general comparison is obvious, but beyond that the mantra that it "works like a word processor" is immensely unhelpful. See all the threads about deleting rests, and why can't MS do that when any word processor could.)

A specific issue is that for English (or any other text based on the alphabet) justification is very different from musical justification. Only the spaces between words can normally be changed, and they look ugly if not fairly uniform. The end of a paragraph always stops where it ends, leaving a part empty line. And of course, the last page of the book has a space at the bottom. This is very different from ("proper printed") music, where normally every line and every page is full.

In other languages, different rules apply. Japanese does not have "words" made up of "letters" and separated by spaces, it simply has characters (all of more or less the same size), which may be spaced out to fill the line. Moreover, while not general, sometimes text is "full-justified" to make every line full. You see this on menus, where each item, taking anything from 2 to 10 characters to write, is just spaced out to fill the line. I also found an interesting example on the tax form the other day...

tax.jpg

The text, 地方消費税の課税標準となる消費税額 (about calculating the tax base figure for local so-called "consumption tax", VAT/TVA) consists of 17 characters on 3 lines. 17 is not a multiple of 3, so they have to be arranged unevenly, but not 10-10-7, for example. Instead, each line is spaced to put the line breaks at grammatically appropriate points. And the last line is full. Well, I call this "musical justification" because it is what we need. Unlike English text, but more like Japanese text, music notation can always be stretched out, usually improving legibility and never looking weird.

(If you really want to know a bit more about Japanese typography: https://imaginatorium.org/words/descend.htm )

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