Preferred way to set tempo marks?

[Michael Kiermaier]

Hello list,

I wonder what is the preferred way to set tempo marks as "ritardando", "a 
tempo" etc. The lilypond documentation is very good in general, but I did not 
find much information about this.


I tried a scheme macro that I found in 
http://www.lilypond.org/doc/v2.8/Documentation/user/lilypond/Style-sheets.html:

tempoMark = #(define-music-function (parser location markp) (string?)
#{
  \once \override Score . RehearsalMark #'self-alignment-X = #left
  \once \override Score . RehearsalMark #'no-spacing-rods = ##t
  \mark \markup { \bold $markp }
#})

But it does not work very well. There are collisions with text like ^"arco", 
and rehersal marks completely disappear if they are at a position where also 
a \tempoMark is.

Tempo markups are quite common, so I think there should be a standard way to 
enter them. In my opinion, scheme functions are not very standard.

Greetings and many thanks in advance,

~michael