Re: Incipits

[Juergen Reuter]

On Mon, 11 Feb 2008, Robert Memering wrote:

> Am Montag, 11. Februar 2008 16:36 schrieb Juergen Reuter:
> > IIRC, the spacing engine maintains a variable that keeps track of shortest
> > available duration in a peace in computes the ideal distance of larger
> > note values in a logarithmic scale based on the shortest duration.  Maybe
> > this computation needs to be changed for the incipit (and only there!) to
> > get tighter spacing in the incipit.
>
> IMO, horizontal spacing in incipits should be completely
> "turned off", i.e. uniform (and rather tight) spacing
> regardless of note values, as seen in the renaissance
> manuscripts.
>
> Robert

Yes, IIRC we once used to have a global boolean variable "compact" for 
exactly this purpose, but I think it never worked as expected due to the 
complex resolving of competetive spacing constraints.  Remember that you 
almost always need to stretch something somewhere to get your line of 
score filled; so you can not achieve solely uniform spacing unless in 
combination with ragged printing of systems.  I guess switching from 
uniform ragged spacing in the incipit to non-uniform spacing in the 
remaining score would require a major rewrite of the whole horizontal 
spacing engine.

Greetings,
Juergen