Re: hspace in markup cancels other directives

[Jim Cline]

Hi Aaron, thanks for that.  I thought I had tried all permutations of the 
order of specifications but I missed that one.  It's hard to guess which 
one is correct.--Jim

What you have effectively done is this:
 \markup {
   \smaller { \with-color #blue { \hspace #-3 } }
   text
 }

You could explicitly group the space and text:

 \markup \smaller \with-color #blue { \hspace #-3 text }

Alternately, move the space outside the other commands:

 \markup { \hspace #-3 \smaller \with-color #blue text }