Re: Creating marginal comments?

[Simon Albrecht]

On 29.11.2016 13:02, tapani wrote:
> I am producing a hymnal, using Lilypond and lilypond-book with xelatex. I
> would like to insert biblical references in the margin of the page, parallel
> with the lyrics.
>
> For example, in "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing", the lyrics "Ris'n with
> healing in his wings" would have "Mal. 4:2" in the margin.
>
> In TeX like systems, this is easily done with the \marginnote command.
>
> Is there a practical way of doing this within Lilypond: of inserting
> something like \mark or \markup in the \lyricmode environment such that it
> will place the comment automatically in the outer margin of the page?

It would not appear so. There is no actual command for this in LilyPond, 
and LilyPond can’t even handle multiple columns on one page, so you’d 
have to resort to very laborious \markup constructions encompassing 
entire pages. I don’t think this is worthwhile. Maybe you’d be better 
off modifying the resulting pdf with another program (perhaps Scribus, 
or Adobe InDesign)?

Best, Simon