Re: measure count every 4 bars

\version "2.27.1"

When I started this thread I thought there had been a straight-forward 
solution in the past.

Even though I had a career as a programmer, my Scheme skills are still 
lacking. These two solutions are not that clear to me.

I have an idea for a higher-level solution but first I need to know the 
syntax for setting start-from as documented in Internals Reference 
3.1.85 MeasureCounter.

Where in the Lilypond documentation can I learn more about using the 
internals?

Thank you,

Paul


On 6/24/26 6:04 AM, Mark Knoop wrote:

> At 08:30 on 24 Jun 2026, Gabriel Ellsworth wrote:
>> Paul, I thought of one possible approach.
>> On Mon, 22 Jun 2026, Paul Scott wrote:
>>> How can I get measure count every 4 (or any different
>>> interval) bars?
>>>
>> On Tue, 23 Jun 2026, Paul Scott wrote:
>>> I think I found the section that you are citing:
>>>
>>> https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.27/Documentation/notation/bars#measure-counts
>>>
>>> I have never used measure counts myself, but I imagine
>>> that someone with experience has an answer to your
>>> question!
>>>
>>> I am rewriting some parts to a piece that has some
>>> instruments playing a repeated pattern over 14 measures.
>>> The measure counts help the players keep track of where
>>> they are.
>>>
>> Here’s my “solution.” I put that word in (curly
>> <https://practicaltypography.com/straight-and-curly-quotes.html>)
>> quotation marks because this is very much a manual hack.
>> What I am doing below is removing the MeasureCounter
>> stencil surgically. Please see the following
>> documentation: 36.7.1 Removing the stencil
>> <https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.27/Documentation/notation/visibility-of-objects#removing-the-stencil>
>> .
> You might be better overriding MeasureCounter.text with a new function based on the original measure-counter::text:
>
> https://gitlab.com/lilypond/lilypond/-/blob/master/scm/output-lib.scm#L2356
>
> Just include a modulo check on left-number-text and return an empty string if you don't want to print that number.
>