lilypond-notation: Spacing issues
4 Spacing issues
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The global paper layout is determined by three factors: the page layout,
the line breaks, and the spacing. These all influence each other. The
choice of spacing determines how densely each system of music is set.
This influences where line breaks are chosen, and thus ultimately, how
many pages a piece of music takes.
Globally speaking, this procedure happens in four steps: first,
flexible distances (‘springs’) are chosen, based on durations. All
possible line breaking combinations are tried, and a ‘badness’ score is
calculated for each. Then the height of each possible system is
estimated. Finally, a page breaking and line breaking combination is
chosen so that neither the horizontal nor the vertical spacing is too
cramped or stretched.
Two types of blocks can contain layout settings: ‘\paper {...}’ and
‘\layout {...}’. The ‘\paper’ block contains page layout settings that
are expected to be the same for all scores in a book or bookpart, such
as the paper height, or whether to print page numbers, etc. See 
Page layout. The ‘\layout’ block contains score layout settings, such
as the number of systems to use, or the space between staff-groups, etc.
See Score layout.
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