Auto-Spacing of Lyrics When Page Scaling is Reduced
I regularly find myself trying to produce compact versions of choral pieces, etc., so that the music will fit on the music stands of instrumentalists with a minimum of page turning. Some of these instrumentalists are also singers, so that they need to be able to see lyrics as well as notes.
To accomplish this I often resort, after compacting the page as much as possible using SHIFT+{, to reducing the scaling of the pages. But then I have to bump up the font size for the lyrics so they can be read. When I do this, the lyrics typically get smashed together.
There is clearly room to space the lyrics more helpfully, as I can do it manually by inserting spaces after words using CTRL+SPACE. But this is a very time-consuming process.
I wonder if perhaps this particular scenario got overlooked in the work on autospacing for version 3?
I'm attaching a score that illustrates this problem.
Many thanks for your consideration.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| The Coming of Winter_v26-Vocals.mscz | 33.71 KB |
Comments
Format > Style... > Lyrics > Min. distance
The default of 0 seems not to be a good choice
Same page, Always force dash, on by default, off for your score (probaby becaise it is a 2,.x import?)
In reply to Format > Style--- > Lyrics >… by Jojo-Schmitz
Min distance is 0 by default for compatibility with MuseScore 2, mostly; it ends up being a better choice for MuseScore 3 scores because always force dash will now default to true.
In reply to Min distance is 0 by default… by Marc Sabatella
'always force dash' is off for imported 2.x scores, on for new 3.x scores. Min. distance is 0 on either case
In reply to 'always forst dash'is off… by Jojo-Schmitz
Right. So, for 2.x scores, the min distance setting of 0 looks bad IMHO because of the missing dashes, but it helps with compatibility. For new scores, the ever-present dashes means we can get away with a 0 setting for min distance and it isn't as bad We got more complaints about things taking too much space than about the being too crowded and chose the default for new scores accordingly.
I no longer see it here, but there was briefly a comment directing me to the minimum distance setting under Styles/Lyrics -- which was, of course, a Godsend. Maybe I would've figured it out from the comments above anyway; we'll never know.
Anyway, thanks all for the assistance!