Simpler lyric notation

[Reuben Thomas]

I've just been entering lyrics for a song, and I've come up with a puzzle:
what is the point of -- and __ ? As far as I can see, there should be a --
between every pair of syllables in a word, and a __ at the end of every
word. Hyphen (-) at the end of a syllable is unnecessary AFAICS.

Of course, this is all rather annoying to type. What I'd expect is to use
hyphens as at present, and never to have to type -- or __. This is what
happens for example in Sibelius: hyphens and underlines are produced
automatically as needed (unfortunately hyphens aren't drawn very well, but
that's irrelevant, and they seem fine in LilyPond).

Am I missing something important about lyric typesetting? If not, the
above scheme would seem to be very easy to implement, and save quite a lot
of typing.

-- 
http://www.mupsych.org/~rrt/
Reality is what refuses to disappear when you stop believing in it (Dick)