support for hymns?

[Ted Walther]

I've been slowly getting up to speed using the version of Lilypond in
Debian, 2.6.3.  Using english.ly for example, completely borks the
ability to use es and is for flats and sharps.

FEATURE ONE:

Hymns often have a refrain at the end, and it is customary for the
lyrics of the refrain to be centered between the bass and treble clef.
One of the example hymns from mutopia just puts the refrain in the
middle verse.  This isn't nice, because hymns with an even number of
verses will end up with the refrain looking a bit off.

So, is there a feature to vertically center the refrain part of the
lyrics, and if not, how much would you want to add it?

FEATURE TWO:

Many times with hymns there will be the actual music of the hymn.  But a
convention in some churches is to play a few bars of the hymn, then
pause, then actually play it.  And possibly at the end play a coda.
This helps the congregation by reminding them of the tune so they can
sing along.

Is there a feature to tell the midi output to act in this way?  That is,
output a few bars, pause a configurable amount of time (3 seconds is
good) then play the whole thing from the beginning?  And specify a coda
to play at the end too?

FEATURE THREE:

With hymns, the music needs to be played once for each verse.  I would
like to use lilypond to generate accompaniment music for singing along
to.  Is there a feature to tell lilypond to repeat the midi output once
for each verse?

CONCLUSION:

I suspect features two and three just require some typesetting magic in
the \midi {} section to tell it which bars to output.  For instance:

   \midi { 
       \bars 1 to 4 % to remind people of the tune
       \repeat \numverses \bars 1 to 20 % the tune
       \bars 21 to 22 % coda

Is that already possible?  I didn't see anything like that in the
manual.

Han-Wen, I was happy with your work last time.  Please let me know what
you recommend as a solution, and how much you would want to code it,
should that be necessary.

Ted

--
           It's not true unless it makes you laugh,                           
      but you don't understand it until it makes you weep.

Eukleia: Ted Walther
Address: 5690 Pioneer Ave, Burnaby, BC  V5H2X6 (Canada)
Contact: 604-430-4973