Re: Close or document the stretchability=0 backdoor?

[Keith OHara]

On Tue, 31 May 2011 01:14:45 -0700, Joe Neeman <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 10:44 PM, Keith OHara <address@hidden> wrote:
> > If the flexible-vertical-spacing variable 'stretchability is defined, but
> > has value 0.0, then
> > a) the staves will not stretch to fill extra space
> >  b) the staves will not compress, making basic-distance serve as
> > minimum-distance
> >  c) some people expect padding to be ignored, per Carl's comment on issue
> > 1654

> > What is stretchability = 0 supposed to do ?
>
> I don't think it was originally "supposed" to do anything, but it turned out
> to be a useful way to force a fixed spacing. With this application in mind,
> I think (b) and (c) are both appropriate, and that the distance should be
> the maximum of basic-distance and minimum-distance.

The documentation says that compressibility is the difference between 
basic-distance
and minimum-distance.  This made sense to me because I figured we wanted 
compressibility
to be different than stretchability, similarly to how glue works in TeX.

The code would be a lot simpler if it matched the current documentation, because
the docs describe the default setup in current code, before the tests for 
stretchability
take effect.

I'll make sure that there are simple ways to get (b) and (c) without the 
stretchability=0
switch.  If all looks good, I'll remove the stretchability==0 special case in 
my patch
for issue 1669.