This email is a reply to https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2026-04/msg00018.html. Please see that thread for context. (Simon, I hope that this paragraph helps and doesn’t cause any issues! I wrote a new subject line to reflect what we are actually discussing at this point.)
On Thu, 2 Apr 2026, Lukas-Fabian Moser wrote: > I'm a bit surprised that the spacing doesn't get messed up completely by > the spacing tricks I used. If it keeps working fine, this might be > something that we should integrate into LilyPond proper. > I support adding the ability to print stanza numbers after every line break to off-the-shelf LilyPond. Why? In the United States, at least, many people consider The Hymnal 1982 to be “the gold standard” or at least one of the leading examples of an excellent hymn book. And that hymnal prints stanza numbers in every system, if the hymn contains five or more stanzas (verses). > Is it possible to customise the text of repeatStanzaFormatter by stanza? > > That's no problem at all. The repeatStanzaFormatter is, at the moment, a > function that takes a markup and changes it somehow (I had in mind my > favourite use case of putting parentheses about it). But you can change it, > for instance, to a constant function: Try > > \set repeatStanzaFormatter = #(const (markup "Cr")) > > in your Cantor lyrics line, e.g. directly after \set stanza = "Cantor". > That works perfectly! Thank you. > What I'm not sure about is what would be the ideal user interface for > repeated StanzaNumber's. A (user-selectable) function that reformats the > given stanza number? A second argument to a \setStanza command that allows > the user to specify the alternative form of that specific stanza number > that should be repeated at line beginnings? Something else? > Current documentation links for reference: 9.3 Stanzas (LilyPond Notation Reference) <https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.25/Documentation/notation/stanzas> https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.25/Documentation/internals/stanzanumber My suggested UX: In a future release, my code would include something like the following: \layout { \context { \Lyrics * \override StanzaNumber.repetition = ##t % (the default would be ##f)* } } … and also the option to \set repetitionStyle or \set repeatStanzaFormatter (exact wording TBD) for an individual stanza.
