[smufl-discuss] Re: "Music Enhanced Text Fonts" (Slightly OT)

[David Webber-2]

From: Michael Scott Cuthbert

> I have been discussing with Daniel about this and after trying around
> Bravura Text (bravo!) for a while, I believe that there’s no good way to
> both scale the musical symbols so that they look good in relationship to
> the surrounding text while at the same time retaining their relative
> proportions to all other musical symbols.<

For musical symbols in general *within* a passage of text in a text
application, I'm sure that's true.

>  For instance, an ornament like mordent is generally only a bit bigger
> than the notehead of a note and far smaller than, say, a Treble clef. So
> font designers should try to make symbols that are likely to be used in
> close proximity in a text context (such as a discussion of the symbols of
> various ornaments) have consistent relative sizes (as much as this is
> possible) while not attempting to keep relationships with other groups of
> symbols. <

My "Music Enhanced Text Fonts" manage, but only by being far less
ambitious - see below!

> Positioning of glyphs are different in a text context.  For instance, the
> upward stemmed quarter note and downward stemmed quarter note need not
> have their noteheads at the same position. An upward stemmed note should
> probably rest on the baseline to look good with text. A downward stemmed
> note would presumably need to be higher in order not to descend below the
> descender line. <

Yes.  And the size of glyphs is also different in text and in different
music contexts.

SMuFL's use of OTF ligatures, eg to put small accidentals by ornaments for
example, is very elegant, but my code (http://www.mozart.co.uk) is
approaching its 20th birthday and OTF ligatures were not big in 1994, so, eg
for a trill with a flat,  it just draws the ornament and the small
accidental.

In fact, in my musical symbols fonts,  I have 3 sets of accidentals at 3
sets of accidentals for code-points:

normal for notes;
small for grace notes (which have their own code points) and accidentals;
and others for text and chord names.

The 'text accidentals' have a base line and size which matches them to
alphabetic characters for chord names like 'G#7b5' and other text like 'Bb
clarinet'.   These last are what I am including in my "Music Enhanced Text
Fonts".

My ambition for *text* fonts  here is limited to common text of the form 'Bb
clarinet' and chord names.   I am not, (at this stage at least), aiming to
write a discussion of music symbols with illustrations included as text, so
I don't need notes with stems and so on.

On the other hand, while Bravura Text, aims to provide any symbol you may
need, this means that you have something like "Lots of text..."<switch font
to Bravura>flat-sign<switch back to text font>"lots more text".    That
requires that you can change font in mid text which is no good for simple
applications like Windows NotePad or simple (non RTF) controls in dialogue
boxes.   More complicated  examples will require OTF ligature support, which
I suspect is not yet universal, though it may effectively become so in time.

And crucially (for me) the symbols inserted from Bravura will not match the
style of an arbitrary text font.   So while my "Music Enhanced Text Font"
initiative is limited in what it lets you write, it does cover the commonest
cases, and it is more ambitions in matching styles, and in the range of
applications which can use it.

But none of that means I couldn't put the accidentals at SMuFL's code
points, and I'm investigating that possibility.   In fact I've started
looking at Bravura Text and I've already (I believe) found some oddities in
the symbols for chord names:

E870, E871  (diminished and half-diminished)  sit on the base line.   I'd
have expected them to be raised, much like the degree symbol, to match text
in the form of B°7.
E873 (major 7th) is tiny!   It should surely be approximately at least the
size of an 'A' or maybe just a bit shorter?

E875-E878  (parentheses and brackets) are potentially enormous - much taller
than text with a caps height equal to the stave height - except that they go
well above the WinAscent and are therefore not readily usable.

And a general comment: in the 'chord symbol range' I don't have separate
brackets or parentheses, () []  but I do have a separate slash / which SMuFL
doesn't.   Is it worth SMuFL including a slash for chords like Eb7/G  and
C6/9 - eg at E87A?

If my objective for a given *text* font is to represent SMufL text for chord
names by introducing symbols at SMuFL code points, I guess I need acidentals
E260-E264 (sized and aligned for text) and E870-E878.   This would allow you
to change the font on 'Sonata in Bb minor' or 'G#7b5'  from text including a
Bravura symbols to text in a consistent Music Enhanced Text Font - which
looks like a worthwhile objective.

Dave

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





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