[smufl-discuss] Re: Microtonal accidentals

[dspreadbury]

Hartmut wrote:

> I have once made a survey of existing microtonal accidentals which
> resulted in the collection you can find here:
> http://www.capella.de/download/mehr/accidentals.pdf
> Of course this collection is not complete. At least the persian
> accidentals are missing
> http://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%DA%A9%D8%B1%D9%86
> <a href="http://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%B3%D8%B1%DB%8C_%28%D9%85%D9%88%D8%">http://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%B3%D8%B1%DB%8C_%28%D9%85%D9%88%D8%
> B3%DB%8C%D9%82%DB%8C%29
> as well as the SMuFL symbols U+E172 to U+E176 of inverted and reversed
> accidentals which I haven't seen before yet.

This looks like an excellent start, for which many thanks. Do you have the
sources available that refer to each of these symbols? Although I am
willing to consider an arrangement and naming scheme that is graphical
rather than based on a known meaning if that is all that is practical (the
same situation arises with many of the ornament glyphs, too), I would
prefer to try to organise these symbols into compatible "schemes", i.e. to
group together those symbols that are commonly used together. Obviously
this does not enforce any particular use for consuming applications, but I
think it would be preferable to try and provide some sense of the meaning
of these symbols; this will also be of use to consuming applications, many
of which will need to provide some kind of string-based identifier for
each symbol.

So if you can share your list of sources for these symbols, that would be
exceptionally helpful. I can see that, at least, Sabat's Extended
Helmholtz-Ellis JI pitch notation scheme is included, but I'm not
experienced enough in the field to identify everything else.

In addition to not encoding Persian accidentals, it appears that your
survey also does not include either the Maneri-Sims notation mentioned by
Joe, nor Ben Johnston's system for just intonation.  To my untrained eye
there appears to be some overlap between Johnston's symbols and the
symbols in the Sagittal system (also not included in your survey).

> I think SMuFL would be a great chance to bring some systematics or at
> least documentation into this field.

I agree, and ideally this should be done through setting out the meanings
of these symbols as well as their appearance, if at all possible.

Daniel

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