Spanner with three (or more) text parts

[Maximilian Albert]

Hi everyone,

I wonder if is there neat way to create a text spanner similar to this:

   string ---- gen ---- do

The syllables "string" and "do" can obviously be set by the edge-text property.
But how to account for the "gen" part?

It is certainly possible to place two spanners side by side in the following 
way:

   string ---- gen  "" ---- do

(hence the left edge text of the second spanner is empty). But this requires a
lot of manual tweaking concerning the horizontal and vertical placement of the
text in order to achieve a pleasing alignment. It would be nice if there was a
possibility to let lilypond do the spacing and alignment instead. Does anyone
know a way to do this?

And by the way: Am I right that even the left and right edge texts of a _single_
spanner are not necessarily horizontally aligned? Is there a reason and/or a
simple fix for this? I think I read something about a similar issue some time
ago, either in the docs or on the mailing list. But I can't seem to find it
right now.

Thanks a lot and best regards
Max


P.S.: Just for the record and even if you probably get to hear it rather often
(which is not often enough considering the quality of your work): You are doing
a brilliant job, all of you! It is a huge pleasure watching lilypond improve at
breathtaking speed and to feel as part of the community.