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

[dspreadbury]

Dave wrote:

> I think of the "2/3-size clefs" as  "full size clef changes".    They
are
> symbols, as Cecilio points out, with a completely different role from
the
> clefs at the start of lines.

I don't think they have a completely different role. But I think we've
established already that we don't agree on this point :^)

> As I say, philosophically one can argue that cue notes, when used, are a

> manifestation of the the whole font at a smaller size.  Whereas clef
changes
> and grace notes have a very different musical role from clefs at the
start
> of lines and normal notes.

Is it the job of the music font itself to encode such semantic differences
as the (to my mind, highly debatable) difference between a clef at the
start of a system and a clef change elsewhere in the system?

> As things stand one will need at least 6 instances of the font to draw a

> general piece of music
>
> one for normal symbols
> another for clef changes
> another for cue notes
> another for grace notes
> another for cue grace notes
> another for clef changes on cued in staves

Perhaps you can explain to a non-technical dummy like me what the real
underlying technical problem is here that makes it so undesirable to use
the same font at a variety of sizes while drawing the score.  It sounds to
me -- and pardon me if I have misunderstood what you've said -- as if you
are already using the font at at least *four* sizes anyway in Mozart:

one for normal symbols, clef changes and grace notes on full-size staves
one for cue-sized notes on full-size staves
one for normal symbols, clef changes and grace notes on small staves (e.g.
in solo instrument + piano scores)
one for cue-sized notes on small staves

So what is two more required sizes between friends?

I know from the experience I had working with the team on Sibelius that
changing pens and fonts can be a somewhat expensive operation in
performance terms, particularly if you do it thousands of times. For
years, Sibelius's drawing operated in a strict "top to bottom, left to
right" order, so it was swapping pens and fonts all the time (first draw
staff lines, then get a font for the clef, then get a font for a note, now
draw a stem, now get a font for a dynamic, etc., etc.). Once we
implemented Magnetic Layout in Sibelius 6, which required a proxy for
drawing before working out the collision avoidance, we could pipeline the
drawing to a great extent so that all items that used the same pen or font
at the same z-order position could be drawn successively without swapping
pens and fonts, which gave a significant performance boost.  And perhaps
Mozart already has a more sane and performance-optimised drawing mechanism
in place anyway.

> and that's before we get to chord symbols and chord shapes.   This seems

> like overkill to me.   So it's not so much a font (in the traditional
> printing sense) as a collection of pictograms.

Yes, but to what extent is *any* digital typeface a font in the
traditional printing sense? I know Emil has already pointed out that in
typography it is not uncommon for text font families to include "display"
variants designed for printing at large sizes and "caption" variants for
printing at small sizes, for many (possibly most) families it is instead
expected that the same font must be drawn at several sizes to achieve
things like headings, body text, captions, footnotes, and so on, within
the same document.

My objection is really about the amount of duplication that your proposal
requires. You have conceded several times in this discussion that
duplicating all these symbols at cue size is probably a step too far. How
about taking one step further back still? ;^)

Daniel

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