The 'lyrics under the notes' works OK in ABC, but you do have to read the manual about how to control syllable placement if you want them to line up properly and the output may not be visually as neat as wysiwyg applications.

About the bar lines in ABC. I think they are as much for writing as reading. Folks into coding might not like the redundancy but proof reading would be a lot harder without them. I don't know about other people but I am much more likely to slip up over note-length coding than to get the bar line somewhere other than before the first note of the bar.

Am I right that LilyPond has some redundancy in that the even though the key is given a G major the F's are shown as sharp?