Hi Karl, On 25/03/2026 20:29, [email protected] wrote:
E.g it would be nice if I could place lyric text in a variable so that I don't have to do spellchecking in so many places, but it isn't unusual to have text like "Text, text, text, text." wich I don't know how to do unless I spell it out.
I would like to give a word of caution. If you mean to share the lilypond code with others, using such shortcuts for input is very problematic. The code will be much more difficult to read, maintain and modify to anyone not familiar with your particular set of helper functions, so if your goal is to provide a community resource, the value you get for your work unfortunately gets seriously diminished.
I have more than once found lilypond code for works I wanted to typeset (from quite well-known sources) and needed to do so much work cleaning it up, understanding custom music functions, untangling complex setups, that it may have been almost faster to just input it from scratch.
So I would urge you to carefully consider the benefits and drawbacks and wherever reasonably possible, use vanilla syntax or simple custom functions instead of building a convoluted set of tools only you are using.
Best, Simon
