Re: Sponsoring lilypond development Was Re: Score parts: instrument and duration

[Erik Sandberg]

On Thursday 18 August 2005 14.13, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> Erik Sandberg wrote:
> > Did you try \pageBreak? :) IMHO, perfect page breaks is one of the things
> > that
>
> \pageBreak, did we have that? :-)
>
> Yes, I tried, but I thought it was a lot of hassle. It would ease up
> things if lily produced line breaks in places where a page break is
> sensible.

I have been thinking about this issue. There are two problems with "sensible" 
page breaks:
1. Page breaks are only critical when you need to turn pages. If you don't 
need to turn a page, it's better to use the current algorithm.
Page breaks _often_ happen every second pagebreak, but not always. (sometimes 
you may have 3 visible pages at once, sometimes 2). Also, it's always unclear 
whether the first page will be a left or right page so you'd have to 
communicate that somehow. That communication would probably be about as much 
work as inserting a \pageBreak.
2. When there is no good page break (such as in orchestral scores), no effort 
should be done to find the 'optimal' one, we should just be greedy (this can 
of course be done)

For these reasons, I would vote strongly against having clever pagebreaks 
turned on by default. It could be nice as an option, though.

-- 
Erik