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jw_fit_music

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Basic Description

JW Fit Music distributes the music into a specific number of staff systems evenly across a region. It's a plug-in particularly suited for part layout.

The music will be moved across systems regardless of any old system locks and the new staff systems will be locked.

Here are some examples of what it can be used for:

  • Reflow all measures across a complete page spread, until a planned page break.
  • Reflow the measures in a specific section
  • Split systems into more
  • Merge systems into fewer
  • Change the start/end of systems

Basic Concept

"Cell"

The plug-in treats each measure and multimeasure rest as a separate layout unit, called a “cell”. The layout algorithm treats one multimeasure rest as equal to a measure.

Smoothing

Since the main calculation prioritize an equal cell flow throughout the region, that can lead to rather bit rounding errors on adjacent systems. If smoothing is selected, the plug-in will run an extra pass to try to smooth differences between adjacent systems. Smoothing will generally result in a more balanced layout.

Preparation Work

To be able to get a good result, the plug-in needs to know the wanted widths of each cell. Important:

  1. If the calculation should be based on cell length, the music must be spaced, since the calculation is based on the measure widths and multimeasure rest widths.
  2. The multimeasure rests should be created in advance and have good default lengths that is proportional to the general music spacing.

Tips

  1. To reflow the measures layout without changing the number of systems, fit with a Relative value of 0.
  2. Before a project, decide how many systems each page should have. Remove one system from the system count if there is a title on the page.
  3. Work from larger regions to smaller. For example, start by fitting the full page spread until the page turn, then fit smaller sections (that should ideally start/end a system) on the pages.
  4. If the plug-in displays an error message, it's probably caused by a system or page breaks, which might cause a too uneven layout. If that's the case, treat the region before/after the break as two separate regions.
  5. To improve the layout of larger sections, look at the end of the systems. Try to avoid important information (such as a new tempo, new dynamic, time sig change, etc) in the very last cell. To resolve such situations, try to fit that end measure with the subsequent systems and reflow the measure layout.
  6. After the basic measure layout has been settled, use Finale's Space System plug-in and JW Space Empty Rests plug-in for final adjustments on the page.
jw_fit_music.1548090689.txt.gz · Last modified: 2019/01/21 17:11 by jariw