Re: subscript in lyrics

[David Olson]

Thanks for drawing my attention to \markup

Does \markup also work in the header? 

If I'm giving a historical date in the title and wish "BCE" to be smallCaps

\header {
 title = "539. Threshing Floor of Aruna. 1100  \markup { \smallCaps { BCE } }."
}

Its seems that the \markup command is not being compiled. 
The PDF only prints the literal text of the command itself, including the curly 
brackets.

Thanks again for your earlier help; it works beautifully. 

David Olson
Los Angeles



----- Original Message -----
From: "mskala" <mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca>
To: "dadadharma @dslextreme.com" <dadadharma@dslextreme.com>
Cc: "lilypond-user" <lilypond-user@gnu.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 20, 2024 5:59:03 PM
Subject: Re: subscript in lyrics

On Sat, 20 Apr 2024, David Olson wrote:

> I'm a lyric poet writing songs about science.
>
> "CO2" is three syllables and often works better than "carbon dioxide".
>
> It's acceptable even if "2" doesn't appear as a subscript (one sees this
> usage frequently), but subscript would be cool. 
>
> A superscript option would be cool too.

Easy enough to do using \markup and \sub, as in:

<<
  \new Voice = melody { c'2 c'2 | c'4 bes4 f'2 | }
  \new Lyrics \lyricsto melody { \lyricmode {
    "ooh!" "ooh!" C O \markup { \sub { "2" } "!" }
  } }
>>

There are a number of variations possible:  \super for superscript,
\normal-size-sub for subscript without making the font smaller (which
might be easier to read even if it's not standard chemistry usage), and so
on.  In general, you can just break into \markup and use any of the usual
markup commands.  See "Formatting text" in the Notation manual:
   https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.24/Documentation/notation/formatting-text

-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                 People before tribes.
https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/