Writing multiple-voiced music in chords -- adjusting the syntax or finding a magic trick?

[Petr Pařízek]

Hello,
not sure whether it's more appropriate for the "devel" list or for the 
"user" list. So I'm posting it here and in case you don't find it 
relevant, please tell me.

I've been thinking about this for several months already.
Many decades ago, there were a few text-based file formats for music 
notation which all had one common feature.
The events that were supposed to occur all at the same time were given 
on the same line of text, while the events that were supposed to occur 
later were given on subsequent lines.
This had one strong advantage for people like me (who often hear music 
in chords rather than in parts). I didn't have to rethink anything. Just 
the way I heard the music in my head did I notate it in the text file.
Obviously those formats had drawbacks as well but this was the reason 
why I was able to write stuff pretty fast there.
The way LilyPond works is a big contrast to them. In LilyPond, there 
doesn't seem to be any option of getting something similar to that 
behavior. Therefore, if I want to write, let's say, a 5-voiced piece and 
I want to have good idea of how the voices go together, I actually have 
to open 5 independent instances of my word processor, write each voice 
separately, save each voice as an individual text file, and only when 
it's all finished can I merge them all into one ".ly" file.
The trouble is, if the piece is very short, I could easily locate the 
spots not just at the start of a measure but somewhere else as well. 
However, if it takes something like 8 measures or more, there's almost 
no chance I could possibly do that.
This requires me to first imagine "hearing" the parts separately, then 
write one of them into "Voice 1", then write the next into "Voice 2" and 
so on. Perhaps someone who's good at melodic thinking finds this okay 
but for me it's enormously time-consuming.

To clarify, I'll try to first describe a short phrase in one of those 
older formats (the letters after the octave numbers mean note lengths, 
as in "o" for whole, "h" for half etc.). Then I'll describe the same 
phrase with standard LilyPond syntax.

----------

  c3o g3h C4h. E4h
  g3h E4h
  C4q
  d3o f3o A3h F4q
  E4h
  B3h
  D4q
  c3o g3o C4o E4o

----------

  \new PianoStaff \relative <<
    \new Staff <<
      \clef "treble"
      { e'2 e f4 e2 d4 e1 } \\
      { c2. c4 a2 b c1 }
    >>
    \new Staff <<
      \clef "bass"
      { g2 g f1 g } \\
      { c,1 d c }
    >>
  >>

----------

My question is:
Would it ever be possible (perhaps in a future version) to make some 
syntax adjustments in LilyPond which would make writing multiple-voiced 
music at least slightly easier for people like me? Or, in case this 
would be in strong conflict with the flexibility of LilyPond's syntax, 
is there any alternative solution which I just don't know about? If 
there is, it would definitely deserve being mentioned in the NR.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Petr