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<a name="Length-and-thickness-of-objects"></a>
Previous: <a rel="previous" accesskey="p" href="Size-of-objects.html#Size-of-objects">Size of objects</a>,
Up: <a rel="up" accesskey="u" href="Appearance-of-objects.html#Appearance-of-objects">Appearance of objects</a>
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<h4 class="subsection">4.3.3 Length and thickness of objects</h4>
<p><a name="index-Distances-384"></a><a name="index-Thickness-385"></a><a name="index-Length-386"></a><a name="index-magstep-387"></a><a name="index-size_002c-changing-388"></a><a name="index-stem-length_002c-changing-389"></a><a name="index-staff-line-spacing_002c-changing-390"></a>
Distances and lengths in LilyPond are generally measured in
staff-spaces, the distance between adjacent lines in the staff,
(or occasionally half staff spaces) while most <code>thickness</code>
properties are measured in units of an internal property called
<code>line-thickness.</code> For example, by default, the lines of
hairpins are given a thickness of 1 unit of <code>line-thickness</code>,
while the <code>thickness</code> of a note stem is 1.3. Note, though,
that some thickness properties are different; for example, the
thickness of beams is measured in staff-spaces.
<p>So how are lengths to be scaled in proportion to the font size?
This can be done with the help of a special function called
<code>magstep</code> provided for exactly this purpose. It takes
one argument, the change in font size (#-2 in the example above)
and returns a scaling factor suitable for reducing other
objects in proportion. It is used like this:
<blockquote>
<pre class="verbatim">
\new Staff ="main" {
\relative g' {
r4 g8 g c4 c8 d |
e4 r8
<<
{ f c c }
\new Staff \with {
alignAboveContext = "main"
\override Clef #'stencil = ##f
\override TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
fontSize = #-2
% Reduce stem length and line spacing to match
\override StaffSymbol #'staff-space = #(magstep -2)
}
{ f8 f c }
>>
r4 |
}
}
</pre>
<p>
<a href="../9e/lily-d4bb3f64.ly">
<img align="middle"
border="0" src="../9e/lily-d4bb3f64.png" alt="[image of music]">
</a>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="noindent">Since the length of stems and many other length-related properties
are always calculated relative to the
value of the <code>staff-space</code> property these are automatically
scaled down in length too. Note that this affects only the
vertical scale of the ossia – the horizontal scale is determined
by the layout of the main music in order to remain synchronized
with it, so it is not affected by any of these changes in size.
Of course, if the scale of all the main music were changed in this
way then the horizontal spacing would be affected. This is
discussed later in the layout section.
<p>This, then, completes the creation of an ossia. The sizes and
lengths of all other objects may be modified in analogous ways.
<p>For small changes in scale, as in the example above, the
thickness of the various drawn lines such as bar lines,
beams, hairpins, slurs, etc does not usually require global
adjustment. If the thickness of any particular layout object
needs to be adjusted this can be best achieved by overriding its
<code>thickness</code> property. An example of changing the thickness
of slurs was shown above in <a href="Properties-of-layout-objects.html#Properties-of-layout-objects">Properties of layout objects</a>.
The thickness of all drawn objects (i.e., those not produced
from a font) may be changed in the same way.
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