accent not working as expected/desired

[Kenward Vaughan]

Hi folks,

I'm a 1 year cellist who decided to learn lilypond as the best way to
rewrite a piece I'm learning.  The original is too compact for my eyes
at my (ahem) age, and I found that lilypond's output managed the job
superbly.

I tend to be a perfectionist, though, and wanted an accent in a
particular measure to be below the staff lines rather than within those
lines.  The notes involved are 2 tied middle C's between two measures,
with the accent on the first.  The specific line I wrote in my file is

c2.~_\accent c2.\bar "|."  % 79 and 80

This is bass clef, as expected, and the above notes stand a line above
the normal staff.  The accent mark insists on moving into the staff
lines, so I assume that its position is tied to the note, with no
regard for the staff's position?

I tried playing with the markup command, but lilypond does not accept
the \accent as is shown in the documentation.  In other words,

c2._\markup { \accent } 

generates an error.  Any permutation of this fails as well. I am using
version 2.4.5 under Debian Sid.

I assume that some internal variable can be adjusted to affect this,
but I honestly have zoned out, in a sense, trying to answer this one. 
Can someone please explain to me what could be done to address this?

Would such an approach also give me another way to address the
following, where the normal fingering numbers plow into the slur line?

e4( f8) e8-1(
 fis^\markup { "" \raise #1.0 \translate #(cons -1 0) { \small \bold 2x } }
 gis)^\markup { "" \raise #1.0 \translate #(cons -1 0) { \small \bold 4x } }

or

f8(^\markup { "" \raise #0.6 \translate #(cons -0.7 0) { \small \bold 2 } }
  g^\markup { "" \raise #1.5 \translate #(cons -0.7 0) { \small \bold 4 } }
  a)^\markup { "" \raise #0.8 \translate #(cons -0.7 0) { \small \bold 0 } }
  a( g f)

(These may wrap because of my editor afterwards.  Sorry.)

(It's been an interesting weekend, learning this stuff!  :)


Many thanks!


Kenward
-- 
In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be 
_teachers_ and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, 
because passing civilization along from one generation to the next 
ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone 
could have.     - Lee Iacocca