[smufl-discuss] Hufnagel plainchant style

[Grzegorz Rolek]

Daniel, Everyone

Please let me point to two issues within the Medieval and Renaissance
clefs, a quick fix and a thing to consider:

First the quick fix: the two Gregorian clefs should rather be named
'Plainchant C clef (chantCclef)' and 'Plainchant F clef (chantFclef)'
instead of 'Gregorian C clef (mensuralCclefGregorian)' and 'Gregorian
F clef (mensuralFclefGregorian)' for consistency with the rest of the
spec.

Second, the so-called Ancient F clef and the misnamed Mensural C clef —
these are actually plainchant clefs, but of the so-called Hufnagel style
(Hufnagelschrift, Nagelschrift, a.k.a. Gothic, note the characteristic
blackletter stroke). Hufnagelshrift was the main plainchant style in
Germany and Central Europe up to the late 16th century, before the Roman
style, as used in Italy and Western Europe, became the dominant style
for plainchant notation. It was the only style from the various
manuscript-era neumes apart from the Roman one that was adopted in
print, and indeed was printed quite systematically and with moveable
type.

Because I see no reason to have those two clefs out of context like
that, I'd suggest to delete them and skip the Hufnagelschrift for now,
either leaving it as a font variant to the Roman plainchant set, or
prepare a full, separate support in the future if necessary. (I've
already gave it some thought and treating it as a font variant seems
reasonable enough, but nothing to be sure of before there's an actual
implementation to test.)

If these clefs are needed by anyone for some other reason, though, they
should at least be renamed appropriately, that is, 'chantCclefHufnagel'
and 'chantFclefHufnagel' (or 'chantCclefGothic' and 'chantFclefGothic').

Thanks a lot indeed.

Regards,
Grzegorz Rolek


#############################################################
This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to
  the mailing list <[hidden email]>.
To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[hidden email]>
To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[hidden email]>
To switch to the INDEX mode, E-mail to <[hidden email]>
Send administrative queries to  <[hidden email]>