Feature request: Melisma

[Nancho Alvarez]

I am very happy to see that somebody has the same problems than me.

I have typed about 250 scores of renaissance music
using the version 1.4 (you can see them in http://tomasluisdevictoria.org)
This music contain many many many melisma. What I did was:

Use \addlyrics, (or the new \lyricsto )
If neccesary disable the automatic melismata (the command in the 2.1.25 
version is \set Score.melismaBusyProperties = #'(melismaBusy) )
Then combine notes and lyrics in the following way:

\notes{c8 d e f g a b c' c''2 }
\lyrics { ly -- _ _ _ li -- _ _ _ pond }

this makes the sylabes "ly" and "li" run for 4 eights each one.
The result is suboptimal because the hypens go only from the first note 
to the secon note, not to the next sylabe.
You can use also
\lyrics { ly -- _ -- _ -- _ li -- _ -- _ -- _ pond }
but this is very ugly.
I dont like very much extenders, so I dont use them (I dont like how 
lilypond handles  them either)

I was quite happy with the result, until I saw the new version of lilypond.
The alignment of the lyrics and text is very nice and the hypens are 
rendered lovely.
I want my files be rendered with the new version
but to get this new behaviour you have to use a different syntax:

\notes{c8  \melisma d e f  \melismaEnd g \melisma a b c' \melismaEnd c''2 }
\lyrics { ly -- li -- pond }

Now I have to convert all my files to this new syntax. This will be a 
very hard work. I am going to write  a script to automatize the process,
but I am not a coder, I dont know if I will be able to (I am learning 
Perl, just for write this script).

I would like very very much that in the future lilypond include an 
option to make the underscores notation equivalent to the \melisma notation.
It will save me a lot of work, it is very easy and fast to type, and 
besides, it is an easier way to deal with stanzas with different melismata.
Please, include it.


In any case, thank you very much to all the lilypond hackers, for this 
wonderful piece of software that  lilypond is.
Greetings from Spain

                              NANCHO