Layout settings

Score Layout settings are only available when Additional Score Options is selected in Advanced preferences.

These settings define the display of staff line thickness, stem length, and distance between notes and ties, or notes and dots, and other settings.

Figure. Score Layout settings.

Line Thickness settings

  • Line Thickness parameters: This group of parameters determines the line thickness of the following objects: staff lines, stems, ledger lines, bar lines, repeat and end lines, tuplet brackets, text boxes (for boxed text styles), crescendi/decrescendi (also affects line objects and arrows), ties, and slurs.

    Note: If you have a high-resolution printer, try to use smaller line thickness settings (2, or maybe even 1). Smaller staff lines, in particular, look much better. The other parameter settings are more a matter of personal preference. These changes are only visible at high zoom levels on the screen. To really judge the results, try some printouts with different settings. The Slur and Tie Thickness parameters are affected by the Scale parameter in score sets, and the Size parameter in staff styles.

Spacing settings

  • Bar Start Spacing and Bar End Spacing fields: Change the relative distance between the first and last note of a bar, and the preceding or subsequent bar line. Keep in mind that changing the default settings of these parameters only makes sense if rather extreme values have been chosen for the general Spacing parameters in the Global Score pane.

  • Dot to Note Distance and Dot to Dot Distance fields: Determine the distance between the note heads and dots, for dotted notes. Dot/Dot Distance refers to double dotted notes.

  • Accidental to Note Distance field: Use to globally alter the horizontal distance of accidentals from the corresponding note heads. The default setting should only be changed if very small values are used for the Spacing parameters, which results in a tiny distance between notes. This global setting can also be combined with the Accidental Distance parameter of individual notes, in the Note Attributes window.

  • Accidental to Accidental Distance field: Use to globally alter the horizontal distance between several accidentals, in chords.

Others settings

  • Stem Length field: Determines the default setting for stem length.

  • Horizontal Tie Position and Vertical Tie Position fields: Determine the distances between note heads and related ties (which are displayed automatically).

  • Factory Defaults button: Click to reset all parameters to their default settings.