[smufl-discuss] Re: Glyph Registration and Graphical Metadata

[dspreadbury]

Dave wrote:

> I'd have thought therefore that the objective for SMuFL would be to
enable
> you to write music (at a given size and style)  without having to change

> fonts or font styles.    But it seems that you're telling me that this
is
> not the objective?

At this point, I'm agnostic about whether or not it should be possible to
draw every possible musical symbol at any conceivable size without having
to use the font at more than one point size. My guess is that this is, in
its full generality, not a practical goal.

> I am happy with the recommendation not to use precomposed glyphs.  But I

> *would* like a grace note heads, grace-note-sized accidentals, and
> grace-note tail flags so I don't have to select the font at another size
to
> draw grace notes.

You would also, then, presumably want all noteheads, all accidentals and
all note tails available at a third size for cue-sized notes, which are a
different size than grace notes? Cue notes are (per Gould, p.659) 75% the
size of normal notes, and grace notes are "slightly smaller" (Gould,
p.125). How much smaller than cue notes should grace notes be? You and I
may have different opinions about that!

In any case, we're now talking about adding 82 x 2 glyphs to the standard
to duplicate all noteheads, all accidentals, and all tails at three sizes.

And what about tremolo slashes? Do we need to provide them at three sizes?
What about articulations? What about other symbols that might be drawn on
stems, such as buzz rolls or sprechstimme crosses? What about jazz
articulations that are positioned to the left or right of notes? And on
and on.

This is why I don't believe it is possible in general to provide the means
of drawing all conceivable music on a given staff size using separate
glyphs in a single font at a single size: the amount of duplication
required is really not insignificant.

This seems to me a classic trade-off: duplicate hundreds of glyphs at two
smaller sizes in a font, and have the complexity of requiring calls to
separate code points for every possible symbol that could be drawn at
three sizes, versus having a consuming application using the font at up to
three sizes but use the same code points in each case.

I remain deeply unconvinced about this, and my proposal is still to encode
glyphs only at their normal, i.e. full, size, and leave it up to consuming
applications to handle scaling.

Daniel

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