Re: Issue 2376 in lilypond: Automatic footnotes on \null markups causes unexpected results

[lilypond]

Comment #7 on issue 2376 by address@hidden: Automatic footnotes on \null  
markups causes unexpected results
http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=2376

« There will be lots of situations where one will want to pass a typed  
equivalent of "nothing", and it is a nuisance if "nothing" needs to get  
allocated anew every time and is not eq? to "nothing". »

But this why we use s.s_empty () to check for nothing and not s ==  
EMPTY_STENCIL or scm_eqv (s.smobbed_copy (), EMPTY_STENCIL.smobbed_copy ()).

What you're talking about is a major architecture change.  The first note  
in stencil.hh is:

    * Because of the way that Stencil is implemented, it is the most
    efficient to add "fresh" stencils to what you're going to build.

The entire stencil architecture revolves around this principle.

I think it's important to fix this issue using the current architecture  
(meaning adding "fresh" stencils, as the header file suggests).  If you  
want to change it from the ground up, then a new issue can be opened to  
explore that, but I think that should be separate from this issue.