Re: Using strings and other types to return markup

[Andrew Bernard]

Hi Phil,

On 11/05/2016, 9:12 PM, "lilypond-user on behalf of Phil Holmes" 
<address@hidden on behalf of address@hidden> wrote:

>2.  It's a bit more complicated, though.  16th century printers have a habit 
>of eliding an n from a word and instead putting what looks like (but might 
>not be) a tiny tilde above the previous letter to show this.

I was also wondering why you were not using Unicode. Anyway, do you have any 
images showing examples of this 16c practice? I would be interested to have a 
look. This is, as you say, a different requirement to using a fixed unicode 
glyph from a font. I think I have seen similar practice in 18c English printed 
text, but I don’t think the wiggles that I have seen are tildes as such. You 
are reaLly after something for text glyphs that is similar to an ornament on a 
note glyph.

Now that I come to think of it, there is a vast typographic tradition of 
putting symbols on top of letters to mean various abbreviations, for example 
the old No. with a bar over the o to mean the abbreviation for number. A really 
interesting topic. The scheme code is definitely worth having in hand.

Andrew