long tacets

[address@hidden]

I've wondered off and on for some time now if there is, or perhaps, should be, 
a way to create long tacets without resorting to ugly hacks which don't 
represent the actual information.

One common example is an ensemble piece in which a particular instrument is 
finished long enough before the end of the piece that it's silly to write out 
explicitly all the remaining rests.  In traditionally engraved or handwritten 
parts one often sees:

|======== Tacet bis Ende =======|

...or something similar.

Another example I've often encountered in French orchestral pieces has 
something like this at the beginning:

|======== TACET jusqu'à ======|


In both of the above examples there may be key and time changes which are not 
indicated.

Still another example, also from a French piece, is a bit different.  In a 
piece without time signatures but with bar lines and frequently changing 
measure lengths there are multimeasure rests with specified numbers of measures 
printed above the rest.  For practical reasons, there are cue notes after the 
rest.

It occurs to me that since LilyPond is designed to input linear musical data 
and output a beautifully engraved graphical representation of it, that it 
should be possible/desirable to have some widget that can be called to collect 
a tacet section into a block rest |======| with a user definable label.

-David