[smufl-discuss] Re: Discussing Unicode and encoding dilemmas

[David Webber]

From: Grzegorz Rolek

> Please notice, that you still differentiate the two clefs by the context
> in which they appear, and this doesn't matter as far as Unicode is
> concerned. Take the context out, and the bare meaning of both clefs is one
> and the same: a given pitch reference.

You can emphasise the similarity but that doesn't mean they're the same.
Interchange them and your music is just wrong.

And what's the difference between 'S' and 's'?    And the long form?
Anything other than 'context'?

> David, I think you're missing one thing, so please bear with me for a
> moment. You want the small clef to be a character with a code point,
> because you want it to be included and accessible in the font along with
> the regular clef.

They're both 'regular' clefs - you can't demote one of them to being
'irregular'.

> But having no code point does not mean a glyph can't be included in a
> font; you can have both of them included, one, the default, accessed by a
> code point, and the other by some font feature or a glyph index.

As I understand it, 'font features' or a 'glyph index' are features of the
OpenType implementation, not of a font itself.  But why not have a font with
just capital letters in a font and have the lower case as a separate 'font
feature' or 'glyph index'.   Why on earth should lower case have their own
code points, let alone variants like the long s?

>That's because font is not a collection of characters — it's a collection
>of glyphs, some of which should be encoded, some shouldn't.

Interesting: last time I mentioned 'glyphs'  I was told that they're not
'glyphs' they're 'characters'.   I don't seem to be getting consistent
responses here.

>That's exactly what Unicode tried to ensure when banning ligatures or mere
>glyph variants from having its own code point: that you could have in a
>font just any glyph or a variant of, but only the ones with a semantically
>distinct, default meaning will be transmitted as bare text.<

A clef change is a semantically distinct meaning: it is wrong to substitute
it with the larger clef.  It is not an optional variant.  Nor is it a
somehow less important variation.   (And, while we're here, nor is a grace
note an optional variant of a note: it has an entirely different meaning.)

But in fact the two sizes of clef are as exactly like upper and lower case
letters as they could be:

Large clefs ones go at the start of a line.
Capital letters go at the start of a sentence.

Small clefs go in the middle of a line
Lower case letters go in the middle of sentences.

Dave

David Webber
Mozart Music Software
http://www.mozart.co.uk/


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