4.14.8 Hiding staves

In orchestral scores, staff lines that only have rests are usually removed. This saves some space. This style is called `French Score'. For Lyrics (lilypond-internals), LyricsVoice (lilypond-internals), ChordNames (lilypond-internals) and FiguredBass (lilypond-internals), this is switched on by default. When these line of these contexts turn out empty after the line-breaking process, they are removed.

For normal staves, a specialized Staff (lilypond-internals) context is available, which does the same: staves containing nothing (or only multi measure rests) are removed. The context definition is stored in \RemoveEmptyStaffContext variable. Observe how the second staff in this example disappears in the second line:

     \score  {
       \notes \relative c' <<
         \new Staff { e4 f g a \break c1 }
         \new Staff { c4 d e f \break R1 }
       >>
       \paper {
         linewidth = 6.\cm
         \translator { \RemoveEmptyStaffContext }
       }
     }

The first page shows all staffs in full. If they should be removed from the first page too, set remove-first to false in RemoveEmptyVerticalGroup (lilypond-internals).

This page is for LilyPond-2.0.3 (stable-branch). Report errors to <bug-lilypond@gnu.org>.