[smufl-discuss] Re: Glyph removal requests and reconsidering mandatory glyphs

[dspreadbury]

Michael wrote:

> Currently optional glyphs are limited to things like ligatures and
> stylistic alternates. It seems that the range of mandatory glyphs should
> be scaled way back, or perhaps dropped altogether. Text font developers
> usually don't implement every single Unicode character, yet their fonts
> are still Unicode-compliant. Market demand will correct the fonts that
go
> too far in dropping characters, especially with Bravura setting a high
bar
> for inclusiveness.

I hope you'll excuse me for addressing your comments in this email
somewhat out of order.

Rather than worrying about the worthiness of Daseian notation, Sagittal
accidentals (notwithstanding Dave's eloquent defence of their inclusion,
which I fully support), and the combining strokes for ornaments (which are
in fact expanded in comparison with the Unicode Musical Symbols range,
based on suggestions by Emil Wojtacki), I think you have hit upon the main
issue.

I will stop referring to any glyphs in SMuFL as "mandatory" and instead
call the range between U+E000 and U+F3FF "recommended", and add a
clarifying statement that in order for a font to be considered
SMuFL-compliant, it need not implement every recommended glyph (and indeed
it need implement *no* optional glyphs, in the range U+F400 and up);
instead it should implement only those glyphs that are appropriate to its
intended use.

In my opinion this neatly solves the problem, and does not require that
any of the glyphs already included in SMuFL should be removed.

> Sometimes I've heard arguments along the lines that added characters
> aren't a barrier to entry for font developers because you can always use
> Bravura's glyphs if you don't want to create your own. That may hold
true
> for some developers. For most I think it fails on aesthetic, legal, and
> business grounds. The aesthetic issue is maintaining a consistency of
> appearance across the font. The legal and business grounds would involve
> Steinberg providing indemnification against copyright claims for Bravura
> users, which seems unlikely.

IANAL (and nor are you, to my knowledge) so I suspect both of us would
need to seek proper counsel on this potential legal issue, but my
perspective on this is that the OFL is sufficiently permissive that there
could be no copyright claim made against a font that uses glyphs from
Bravura. We warrant that every glyph in Bravura has either been drawn by
hand (in 99% of cases by me) or has been included from another font with
similarly permissive licensing (e.g. the Sagittal glyphs all come from the
Sagittal font, which is also licensed under the OFL) and for which a
similar warrant is therefore provided.

Daniel

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