[smufl-discuss] Re: Registration of rests (Was: Glyph registration proposal)

[dspreadbury]

Joe wrote:

> RESTS
>
> > In fact, Petrucci and Opus have rests centred on the font baseline
> (so I did not propose anything new) with exception for semibreve
> rest, which is placed one space higher. But for the easy of handling
> rests on non-standard staves (which are standard for percussion) and
> for more flexibility with polyphonic notation in the old-style alla
> breve time, I suggest this one change concerning the semibreve rest.
>
> Based on the comments so far, I'm agreeing that perhaps we need to
> move away from totally uniform registration of all rests and
> explicitly state that the semibreve rest is registered relative to
> the line from which it hangs, not the center line of an imaginary staff.

The rests in Opus and Petrucci aren't really centered on the baseline, are
they? Here they all are:

Opus - http://i.imgbox.com/abb1jEXw.png
Petrucci - http://i.imgbox.com/adqOwcds.png
Sonata - http://i.imgbox.com/acjQNELw.png

Obviously Opus and Petrucci are consistent, and Sonata is more or less
consistent but offset by half a space. However, the registration of these
symbols doesn't really help scoring applications draw the rests in the
right place. Take a look at the default positions of rests in Sibelius and
Finale on a 5-line staff and a 1-line staff:

Sibelius - http://i.imgbox.com/adt0q244.png
Finale - http://i.imgbox.com/abdjc1cQ.png

Finale does a better job here than Sibelius, in my opinion. And in my
opinion it makes sense for the rest glyphs to be registered in a fashion
that makes Finale's default appearance easy for a scoring application,
which I think means that rests should be positioned relative to the font
baseline as if the font baseline is the middle staff line of a 5-line
staff (or indeed the only staff line of a 1-line staff, which is nominally
equivalent to the middle staff line of a 5-line staff anyway), which is
how rests are currently registered in (my development version of) Bravura,
like this:

Bravura - http://i.imgbox.com/adrRgVav.png

I don't think there's any single registration option that will make it
trivial to move all rest symbols by a consistent distance in order to get
to appropriate positions for multi-voice music: you have to move the
shorter duration rests by a larger number of spaces regardless of where
they are registered relative to the baseline.

Daniel

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