LilyPond – omit first page-number when numbering formatted by markup

Question

I use this snippet to reformat the LilyPond page numbering:

pagenumcol = \markup {
  \column {
    \vspace #0.5
    \fromproperty #'page:page-number-string
  }
}

copyrightcol = \markup {
  \fill-line {
    \box \fontsize #-4
    \column {
      \line { "Educational copying welcome." }
    }
  }
}

\paper {
  oddHeaderMarkup = \markup \null
  evenHeaderMarkup = \markup \null
  oddFooterMarkup = \markup { \copyrightcol \pagenumcol }
  evenFooterMarkup = \markup { \pagenumcol \copyrightcol }
}

When using this example the first page number gets printed. Does anyone on here know how I can omit this?

I tried to add print-first-page-number = ##f, but it does not take any effect in this scenario.

Answer 1

By default, the page number is not printed on the first page, so adding print-first-page-number = ##f won’t change the default setting.

Rather, you first need to check whether LilyPond would by default print the page number on the relevant page. This can be done with \on-the-fly #print-page-number-check-first (see also the relevant section in the LilyPond documentation on customised footers and headers).

This way, you re-activate the default behaviour of not printing the page number on the first page, which you overrode by defining your custom footer.

The following settings should work:

pagenumcol = \markup {
  \column {
    \vspace #0.5
    \fromproperty #'page:page-number-string
  }
}

copyrightcol = \markup {
  \fill-line {
    \box \fontsize #-4
    \column {
      \line { "Educational copying welcome." }
    }
  }
}

\paper {
  oddHeaderMarkup = \markup \null
  evenHeaderMarkup = \markup \null
  oddFooterMarkup = \markup { \copyrightcol \on-the-fly #print-page-number-check-first \pagenumcol }
  evenFooterMarkup = \markup { \on-the-fly #print-page-number-check-first \pagenumcol \copyrightcol }
}