[smufl-discuss] Re: Private use area?

[dspreadbury]

Alex wrote, inter alia:

> But the core of the issue is that, in it's current form, the standard
> basically says that it won't take care of size for cue size clefs within
the
> context of a SMuFL font and instead entrust this to the application. I
can't
> see that this is an approach that is taken with any other symbol in
SMuFL
> and I therefore find it highly inconsistent with the general standards
of
> the whole project.

It won't surprise you, I'm sure, to hear that I disagree with you on this
point.

Dave's argument is that he wants to use a single point size, matching the
staff size, to draw all symbols, which is why his font in Mozart contains
smaller clef glyphs for clef changes. However, he readily admits that his
ambition to use a single point size is thwarted by the requirements of
drawing cue notes and grace notes, with their accoutrements such as
accidentals and articulations, which he does not also provide at both cue-
and grace note-size (nor indeed at cue-grace note-size!) in his font. So
to draw cue and grace notes, he has to switch point sizes. Nevertheless,
for Mozart, Dave just wants three extra glyphs: clef change versions of
the common G, C, and F clefs.

By comparison, SMuFL encodes 41 recommended clefs, and additionally a
further 9 optional stylistic alternates, and 62 optional ligated forms
(primarily to accommodate numbers above and below G and F clefs). Which of
these are "important" enough to require dedicated clef change glyphs? Just
the G, C, and F clefs? What about the historical variants? What about the
clefs denoting the octave transposition of an instrument? What about the
clefs denoting transposition of any interval?

It is common to require a variety of different symbols at different
effective sizes even when drawing music for a single staff size. It is my
opinion that it is entirely arbitrary to single out clefs for special
treatment. There is also some debate over the exact amount by which the
size of a clef should be reduced for a clef change: the arithmetic
required to achieve a different scale factor is complicated considerably
if the clef change glyphs have already been scaled by some arbitrary
amount by the font designer.

> How is a designer to accomplish a consistent and harmonious typographic
> concept while having no fine control over glyph size for a completely
> common-place use case?

The approach I'm taking for Bravura, for what it's worth, is to create a
stylistic set containing optical variants designed to be drawn at smaller
sizes, so that the stroke thicknesses etc. match the larger size. I have
based the glyphs I've drawn so far around a nominal reduction in size to
75% normal size, and adjusted the strokes that they will appear as thick
as full-size glyphs when drawn at 75% of the size. This includes the
common clef glyphs. The plan is for our application to work out when a
glyph is going to be drawn smaller than a certain real size (not point
size, but the actual effective size) and automatically select the optical
variant stylistic set for that glyph. (I believe LilyPond does something
similar, except it switches to a different version of Emmentaler
altogether; being based on Metafont, it's easy for the LilyPond developers
to generate subtly different weights of the font to be used at different
staff sizes, analogous to the different punches used at different rastral
sizes in the days of hand engraving.)

Anyway, I remain unmoved on this point. Adding dedicated clef change
glyphs for all clefs duplicates too many glyphs; adding dedicated clef
change glyphs only for the three most commonly-used clefs is arbitrary; it
is not the case that adding any number of dedicated clef change glyphs
would obviate the need for drawing glyphs at different point sizes for the
same effective staff size; and font designers and application vendors have
the freedom to use the "private use area" if they disagree.

Daniel

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