The Engraver mode

Symbol spacing modes

Harmony Assistant enables two different modes for note spacing: arithmetical and engraver modes.
This spacing mode is independent from the document display mode (scroll or page display mode).

In arithmetical spacing mode, notes and rests are separated by a distance that is proportional to their duration. For example, there is twice as much distance after a half note as after a quarter.

In engraver mode, the distance between symbols can be freely adjusted.
 
 

Arithmetical mode	Engraver mode
For example, here is how a half note and a series of shorter notes are displayed in arithmetical mode. As you can see, there is a wide empty space after the half, and the sixteenths are highly compressed.	Here is the same bar in engraver mode. Spacing is not proportional to note duration. Display is nicer and well spaced out.

Whatever the spacing mode you chose, notes at the same time position will be aligned from one staff to another.
Bar display scales are calculated according to the shortest note to be displayed in this bar, for all displayed staves.

There can be a difference between the computed display scale in scroll mode and page mode: in scroll mode, all staves are displayed, so all staves are used in the bar scale calculation. Gregorian and drum grid staves don't follow the engraver mode.
In page mode, only the staves marked to be printed are taken into account.
It therefore may be necessary to adjust the paging in page mode.

Selecting the spacing mode

The choice between arithmetical and engraver spacing mode can be made in the "score" menu. In the same menu, you can set up parameters for engraver mode.
You will select the display size for the different note lengths.
The unit describes the relative size of a displayed note length, compared to the others. It approximately matches the distance in pixels between notes, for a document display scale of 100%.
 

Note: When engraver mode is on, a <E> is displayed in the title bar of the document.

Setting up the engraver spacing mode

You can select each note size, in relative unit:

• Distance after a whole note or longer
• Distance after an half note
• etc
• Distance after a 16th or shorter.
• When notes of short duration are not beamed together, an additional distance can be added to separate them.
• Before each note, a fixed distance is added, independent from the note duration
• When an accidental is displayed, an additional distance is also added.
• Grace notes (appoggiatura) also add an additional distance.

On the left of this dialog window, predefined parameter sets can be selected. You can add your own sets.

Loading and creating documents

When importing a file (MIDI, TAB, KAR, ABC,...), creating a new document from a template or loading a file created by a previous version of the software, the spacing mode will be forced to the value you defined in global setup, "Load" thumb index.