Re: hspace in markup cancels other directives

[Jim Cline]

As a programmer in other languages, I like to think of arguments being 
enclosed in some kind of brackets, like a function f(x,y(z)).  That's why 
I alway enclose what I'm marking up within {}; what's inside are the 
arguments of the markup.  Using your explanation then it looks like

 bes^\markup{\hspace #-3 \smaller{\with-color #blue {text}}}

That helps me understand, thanks.



On Sun, 31 Jul 2022, Werner LEMBERG wrote:

> > Hi Aaron, thanks for that.  I thought I had tried all permutations
> > of the order of specifications but I missed that one.  It's hard to
> > guess which one is correct.
>
> Is it?  I don't think so.  Just bear in mind whether you have used up
> all arguments of a markup command.  In your case,
>
>   \smaller           expects one argument
>   \with-color #blue  expects one more argument, thus not finished yet
>   \hspace #-3        no more argument is expected, thus the chain of
>                      commands stops here: `\smaller \with-color
>                      #blue` gets applied to `\hspace #-3`, which
>                      doesn't make sense, of course
>   text               gets typeset as-is, since the previous commands
>                      are already applied
>
>
>     Werner