2008/8/17 Mats Bengtsson <address@hidden>:
A practically relevant example of the use of \hcenter (to be renamed
to something else), should rather contain a single markup.
Within scores, markups are in principle always used for graphical
objects, that do the horizontal alignment themselves, for the full
markup.
However, for markups at the top level of a file, the alignment point
of the markup is placed relative to the left margin of the page, so
this is a possibility to actually show what happens (unless
lilypond-book plays some tricks within the documentation.
So, instead of the current examples, where you may get confused
by the use of column, I would rather propose the following example
to illustrate the possibilities for horizontal alignment of a single
markup.
\version "2.11.50"
\markup{ Default alignment is left. }
\markup{ \left-align Left. }
\markup{ \hcenter Center}
\markup{ \right-align Right}
and make sure to make the point that these commands set the
alignment point of the full markup. You also needs a number of
bells and whistles to explain why these commands don't have
any effect, when used in a TextScript or RehearsalMark or
most other situations.
I'm afraid this doesn't work too well, Mats; I've tried examples with
the second \markup centred or right-aligned, and they both shunt the
top markup to the right (see attached images).