As I seem to be responsible for starting all this off, I apologise for the collective waste of man and woman hours.

In general, I would not advocate Lilypond over ABC for any purpose unless you *know* you need it. In many years of typesetting folk and traditional (and beyond) music I have never needed functionality some ABC utility could not provide, albeit at times by dint of extreme effort.

To be able to use Lilypond well means committing to using it: it is not a simple program but that in turn means that you can place anything on the page you wish - *if* you know how.

Finally, I don't recommend using Lilypond to process the outputs of other programs. That way lies madness.