magic diacritic markup?

[Trevor Baca]

Hello,

Is there a way to enter something like

  Sch\{AUmlaut}flein

or

  Sch\"aflein

or

  Sch\[A:]flein

directly in lilypond markup?

[Vim under OS X 10.4 (American keyboard, American install, etc) is
angering me and I'd love a way to work around the editor using lower
ASCII that's guaranteed to work anywhere.]

Any in-line syntax or must I switch editors?

Trevor.