Automated lettrine and commands

Question

I need to automatically place lettrines on a text I don't want to edit directly.
So far I have been using
defdrop #1#2 {% note the space before {
  lettrine{#1}{#2} % a trailing space
}

and
drop Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec sagittis vitae massa nec gravida. Fusce quis porttitor leo.

The problem is that some paragraphs start with a command, e.g:
marginnote{Foo} Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec sagittis vitae massa nec gravida. Fusce quis porttitor leo.

In these cases various errors are returned; I have tried with expandafter but with no luck.
How can I make Latex use the first "real" word for the lettrine, i.e. ignoring the (eventually) preceding command?

Steven B. Segletes · Accepted Answer

This approach examines the catcode of the token following drop.  If it is a command (catcode 0), it executes the 1st blob of tokens up to the first space and then reissues drop again.  Therefore you can't accidentally leave spaces between arguments of a leading macro, e.g., rule{1ex}     {2ex}, or the inter-space will scrog the argument absorption.  Generally, this is not an issue, and won't affect commands taking a single argument.
documentclass{article}
usepackage{lettrine,marginnote}
defdrop #1#2 {% note the space before {
  ifcatnoexpandrelaxnoexpand#1defnext{#1{#2}drop}else
  defnext{lettrine{#1}{#2} }fi% a trailing space
  next
}
begin{document}
drop Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec sagittis vitae massa nec gravida. Fusce quis porttitor leo.

The problem is that some paragraphs start with a command, e.g:

drop marginnote{Foo in the margin} Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec sagittis vitae massa nec gravida. Fusce quis porttitor leo.
end{document}

Automated lettrine and commands

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