Articulation with parenthesis-open and with parenthesis-close?

[Rutger Hofman]

Hello list,

in my current score, there are long, consecutive lists of notes with 
articulations (dashes) in parentheses. Now it would improve readability 
a lot if the first of these parenthesized dashes has only a 
parenthesis-open, the last has only a parenthesis-close, and the rest 
has a regular parenthesis. I have seen this in printed music more than once.

I would be happy if I could define new articulations like pOD (for 
parenthesized-open-dash) and pCD (for parenthesized-close-dash) or 
whatever; best would be to have articulation modifiers (which take the 
articulation at hand as an argument): -\parenthesizeOpen -| and 
-\parenthesizeClose -|.

Searching list and archives and snippets didn't bring me where I want. I 
tried to define pDO like this, modifying an example from 2008: 
http://lilypond.1069038.n5.nabble.com/Custom-articulations-pitched-single-note-trills-td40530.html:

\version "2.16.0"

pOpenDashMarkup = \markup{ \teeny ( \musicglyph #"scripts.dstaccatissimo" }
pOD = #(let* ((music (make-articulation "staccatissimo"))
                (popen-dash (lambda (grob)
                             (grob-interpret-markup grob 
pOpenDashMarkup))))
            (ly:music-set-property! music 'tweaks
                (acons 'stencil popen-dash
                    (ly:music-property music 'tweaks)))
        music)

a\pOD

But this gives me:
programming error: Cannot get a text stencil from this font

Also, I wondered why I cannot use #"scripts.staccatissimo". That gives me:
warning: Cannot find glyph scripts.staccatissimo

I would much prefer to not have to indicate dstaccatissimo and 
ustaccatissimo by hand.

Rutger Hofman
Amsterdam