[smufl-discuss] Re: Private use area?

[David Webber-2]

From: Michael Scott Cuthbert

> I’d say as someone whose main use for Smufl is to be able to encode some
> elements of musical symbols within a mainly text environment

As I understand it SMuFL is not designed to apply to a "mainly text
environment" and in any case ...

> that having separate code points for clef changes would make it harder to
> parse musical meaning out of a text.

...having separate code points for clef and clef change, surely actually
simplifies the extraction of 'musical meaning'.

>Thanks also for the clarification on the Private use area.  For the
>purposes of Mozart and other applications that need displaying control
>symbols, would symbols such as "SPEAKER WITH THREE SOUND WAVES (U+1F50A)”
>already in unicode suffice?

In principle I could encode that symbol at that point in my fonts (scaling
it as I would wish with the music symbols), but Mozart has a plethora of
such non-printing 'control symbols' (some created with line drawing, others
produced from the font) and I have no reason to believe that the sort of
mnemonics I would want would be already designed into Unicode.   Also I have
to confess that I have yet to explore the use of symbols outside the BMP
(and in particular which Windows APIs support them).

I'll say a bit more about Mozart's fonts now you mention them, so anyone not
interested, please switch off here!

One of the reasons I got interested in the SMuFL initiative is that it came
along just as I was starting my own project to replace Mozart's music fonts,
hitherto Windows Symbol fonts (limited to something like 240 characters)
by Unicode fonts with musical symbols in the private use area of the BMP
(with now 64000 code points available).  Mozart's private spec for the use
of this area differs significantly from SMuFL's - but I don't want that to
mean that Mozart couldn't use SMuFL fonts in due course.

My initial objective was met just by moving the glyphs and making a new
table of the new code points.    And since then I have been introducing more
glyphs, for extra functionality, than I ever had space for before.  For
example 32 note heads for 'shape note' singers.

Mozart has a set of 'symbols' and symbols are drawn with one or more glyphs.
Treble clef and treble clef change are separate symbols in Mozart's set and
drawing them uses separate code points in the font.  Some 'symbols' require
more than one character: for example a 'mezzoforte symbol' uses an 'm' and
an 'f' from the set of dynamics characters, and 'octave clefs' are just
clefs with an '8' drawn above or below (two characters: clef+8).   [Doing
these with separate clefs each integrally adorned with 8's here and there,
would have used far too many character points in my old symbol fonts so I
never dreamed of doing it that way.]

One of my objectives in going Unicode is quite different from anything in
SMuFL.   I want the whole Latin alphabet included at the appropriate code
points.   This was a bit difficult for geometric reasons, but I think I now
have the optimum compromise solution.   I wanted a 5-line staff symbol the
size of the Em-square to determine the font size.  This means that the
treble clef ascends/descends significantly below it.  I have defined the
caps height also to be that of the Em-square (meaning that a 24pt font has a
5-line staff which is 24 point height and capitals which are 24 points high)
but with significant ascent/descent above/below determined by the height of
the treble clef.   My primary reason was chord names: my original symbol
fonts only had the letters A-G for chord names and H for the German option.
A symbol B7 would be drawn with 'B' and '7' glyphs, or if the German flag
was set with 'H' and '7' glyphs.   But I've had requests for (i.a.) French
options where it would be drawn Si7 and at this point having the whole Latin
alphabet starts to be an advantage.  Of course the chords don't have to be
drawn with the same font, but a standard one won't do, as it doesn't have
all accidentals and things like half-diminished glyphs.

In other respects I freely admit that my fonts are nowhere near as
comprehensive as SMuFL but until Mozart can draw microtonal music or neumes
they don't have to be.

Dave

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




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