Re: Markup functions and punctuation in lyrics

[David Kastrup]

Jean Abou Samra <jean@abou-samra.fr> writes:

> Le 18/10/2021 à 21:22, R. Padraic Springuel a écrit :
>> I’m using some functions to allow me to select words in the lyrics
>> of some hymns in a systematic way so that the same hymn can be used
>> referring to one or more persons (and in some cases, either a man or
>> a woman).  These functions work just fine when they appear in the
>> lyrics by themselves, but when there is punctuation immediately
>> after one of these functions, the punctuation gets shifted to its
>> own syllable.  Is there a way to have the function interact with
>> punctuation more intelligently?  I’m thinking I need to use \concat
>> somehow, but how do I write the function so that it only does the
>> concatenation when the next character is punctuation?
>>
>> Attached is an example showing one of my simple word selection
>> functions followed by a comma.
>
>
> It's slightly tricky. What you may want is a
> function recognizing the comma as its argument,
> but not taking any argument if the next input
> element is not punctuation.

I'd lean towards defining \man like in the question and a function \maN
that takes the following markup and concatenates it.  That's viciously
unclever but sometimes not having to worry whether the computer gets
everything right is its own reward.

-- 
David Kastrup