How to prevent measure from stretching to fill line?

• Dec 4, 2017 - 16:03

I have 4 measures of music before a line-break that don't fit into one line, so the final measure occupies a second line all by itself and stretches to fit it. I don't mind it being on its own line (with lyrics the space is needed) and I do not wish to try to cram it into the first line. I would just like to prevent it from stretching to fill the line so that I have one average-sized measure, with, essentially, open space after it. (I'm writing music for a children's method so I would like to put a graphic there).
Is there a way to set a maximum bar width, while maintaining my line-breaks? Or is it possible to adjust the width of one selected bar manually? Or is there a setting that prevents such spill-over bars from filling entire lines?


Comments

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Thank you, Jojo. I had experimented with this as well, but it only solves my problem for the very last system, and not for previous systems that are effected by line-breaks. Essentially, I have a song with 4 very short verses; I want each verse to start on a new line = 3 line-breaks. Each verse contains 4 measures that do not fit into 1 line, due to space needed for lyrics. So each verse has a line of 3 measures followed by a line with 1 measure stretched out. I would really like to squish that stretched out measure to a normal size (like the last system fill threshold does for the last system) so that it doesn't look so awkward and so that I can put a graphic into the remaining open space.

In reply to by Stefni

In that case, you need to insert a horizontal frame from the Frames palette. It will go after the last measure of one song, but to do this you will actually insert it in front of the first measure of the next song. You will also want to remove the line break from the last measure of the song and add it to the frame instead.

I have the same issue in v3.6.2 (Portable for Linux). Appending a vertical frame to the final bar started the problem and led to the bar extending off the page to the right, so the closing barline was invisible.

I can bring the bar back within the page margins by adding a break to the end of that bar manually, but the bar still takes up the whole width of the page.

Using 'last system fill threshold' in Format - style - page didn't help. I must be missing something.

Just to mention again, this only became a problem after I added the vertical frame at the end to hold some graphics and text. Before that it was fine, and the closing bar was the same width as those in the stave above.

Any ideas?

Many thanks.

In reply to by Enrico_94

Theres: not just that final vertical frame, but also, just before that, a horizontal frame, and one of a negative width!
But even with that removed: the last system theshold doesn't work in that case, as that last measure isn't the last thing in the score, ontop the last measure rather than that horizontal frame has a system break.

Removing the horizontal frame (and the spacer) and then selecting measures 33-39 and reducing strech one notch (pressing { once) and everything looks much better, check the attached

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Thank you so much joJo-Schmitz. The unnecessary frames and system breaks were left over from me trying to fix the problem - but I think the first step I made was incorrect (adding a horizontal frame and then trying to change its size by dragging, which made it end up negative). It looks great now - a lot better.

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