More control over smart layout: "No Break" and "Fixed Spacer"
More control over horizontal layout: No Break
As you know, MuseScore automatically increases the width of a measure when you add notes in a measure. Then when measures don't fit in a single line (we call them "systems" as well), MuseScore will move them to the next line. Sometimes, you might not want this behavior and you want two or measures to stay together when MuseScore will choose to move them to a new line. It's now possible! Select a barline and double click the "no break" icon in the "Breaks and Spacer" palette. And MuseScore will now keep the two measures together, on the same system. The feature name and icon might change, suggestion welcome :)
More control over vertical layout: Fixed Spacer
MuseScore tries to distribute systems and staves on the page evenly and respects the different distances set in Style > General > Page. In previous versions, we could override this with spacers to increase the distance between two staves or systems but we lacked the ability to reduce the distance between them. Nightly builds now have a "Fixed Spacer" that let you override completely the automatic spacing of system and staves. Drop it on a measure, double click it and drag the blue handle to fix the distance. MuseScore will stop trying to distribute the two systems and it will respect the chosen distance.
As always, try a nightly build, feedback is welcome!
Comments
The fixed spacer behaves rather strangly on the last system of a page
In reply to The fixed spacer behaves by Jojo-Schmitz
Please file an issue with steps to reproduce.
In reply to Please file an issue with by [DELETED] 5
see #137956: Strange behavoir of fixed spacer when applied to last system of a page
I like both these ideas quite a lot. The 'No Break' function seems well-named, too.
'Staff Spacer Fixed Down' might be clearer as a description of what the command will actually do, rather than what it is. For instance: 'Fix Staff Space (Down)'. As it stands now, it's almost a 'military'-style sub-categorised item description, but without the commas ('Hat, brass, rear-echelon, typical'). ;o)