[smufl-discuss] Re: SMuFL 0.9 and Bravura 0.9 released

[dspreadbury]

Thanks for your detailed feedback on Bravura Text, Myke. Let me go point
by point:

> * Several of the dynamics (mostly involving fffs) have too much
> space after them.  Several are perfect.
> * In general, I’d aim for less space after symbols than more.

The intention is that, apart from zero-width glyphs, all glyphs should
have an advance width that matches the bounding box of the glyph, i.e.
there should be no right-hand side bearing. What's happening is that those
glyphs that have negative x-coordinates (i.e. they extend left of x=0) are
not getting their widths set correctly. This will be easy to fix.

> * The dynamics are a tiny bit too large based on the x height of
> either Times New Roman or Adobe Garamond Pro — I think that the
> former is a good reference height (they’re too small w.r.t. a large
> lowercase font like Verdana).

The x-height of Times New Roman is 477 (assuming 1000 upm), and the
x-height of Bravura Text is 470; the dynamics fit within this x-height, so
in fact the x-height is already a little smaller than Times New Roman.
However, I will make them a tiny bit smaller if it pleases you.

> * The <> hairpin symbols are a bit high — I’d prefer their start/end
> points to be x line aligned even if it means being a slight
> descender at the ends.

I can lower them a little. (50 font units looks about right to me.)

> * Some of the ornaments are rather small — if a person is discussing
> the use of a mordent, it will probably want to be bigger.

I'll scale these such that they basically occupy the x-height. They'll
then appear too large to be mixed with notes on a staff at the same point
size, but that is perhaps an unlikely use case with this text font anyway.

> * Sost. is very small. Should be full height.
> * Pedal marks (\uE65E-E660) could be aligned with capitals.
> * Harp pedal diagrams can take advantage of the full space.

I will make these a little smaller than the caps height.

> * Should accidentals be elevated above the baseline or not? When
> elevated, they look great in the context of Bb and C# but much less
> good on their own or in the context of bb and c# (as in a minor key
> specification) or on their own (this is a flat: b...).  I think that
> a default of baseline would be a bit better.

You can, of course, move accidentals using the combining staff position
ligatures, e.g. U+EB9A (lower by three staff positions) followed by U+E260
will produce a flat sitting in the "bottom space" of a 5-line staff, i.e.
on the baseline.

A compromise is that I can make U+266D (flat), U+266E (natural), U+266F
(sharp), part of the standard Unicode encoding and present in Bravura
Text, larger and sit on the baseline by default.

> * The percussion ideograms are rather small in look and actually
> have a height (empty space) that changes the line spacing in Word.

There's nothing special about these glyphs in terms of their metrics, so I
don't know why they would change the line spacing any more than any other
glyph in the font. Are you on Windows or Mac?

I will make the percussion pictograms match the caps height.

> * Some things just won’t work without scaling — figurings, accordion
> registration, etc.  Can’t be helped. It’s amazing how much IS clear at
12pt!

I think it would be acceptable for accordion couplers to be caps height,
so I'll make these larger.

> * Most of the tweaks above I imagine might be automatically
> generateable from the Bravura font with a script? There are some
> that would be more work that might not be worth it.  For instance
> the Petrucci F clef (E904) would be much clearer if there was more
> space between the two component symbols.

If there should be more space between the two components in Bravura Text,
presumably that is also true in Bravura, in which case I can make the
change there. How large should the gap be?

> * Mensural symbols would be better to scale so that the O matches
> the same height as a capital O.

At the moment they are scaled such that they can be positioned in the
middle two spaces of a five-line staff. We could make them larger and
position them on the baseline, but that will then prevent them from being
used on a staff.

> E91B-E91F are lower than the preceding mensural symbols (problem in
> Bravura too?)

Not a problem in Bravura, but rather a problem in Bravura Text, though an
easily fixed one.

> * Similarly E92A-F could be significantly bigger — in Ciconia I was
> able to make them clearer.

These should probably not be amenable to being moved vertically, so they
shouldn't be shifted to the middle of the nominal staff. I can make them
match the caps height and sit on the baseline instead.

> * Mensural symbols E950 - E961 would look better if they sat on the
> baseline. While E970-E98F would work better if they were higher
> (i.e., if the default start position were set so that the top of the
> glyph hit the x height).

Again, these are positioned (like the other notes) such that they appear
on the middle line of a five-line staff by default, and can be positioned
elsewhere through use of the ligatures with the "combining staff
positions" control characters.

> * Chant symbols (E990ff) are much too small for using in text.

These are scaled according to a nominal four-line staff using the same
space size as the five line staff. Ideally we would perhaps enlarge them
such that each space is 25% larger than the space for the five-line staff,
i.e. so that a four-line staff would occupy the same height as a five-line
staff. However, this is really pretty complicated, because the ranges of
Medieval and Renaissance notation are mixed in such a way that some
symbols used on both four-line and five-line staves, so it's not practical
to scale some symbols by a different amount, unfortunately.

> * Dasiaen notation has scaling problems and changes the line height.
> Could be scaled so it’s the same height as a capital F or I.

I will scale these such that they match the caps height.

> * Figured bass symbols are too small — either should match the
> number height of surrounding text or superscript/subscript size.
> I’d vote for the former (so that I can say “The symbol [4slash]
> means that same as #4”).

I'll make them match the caps height.

> * EAC0-EACA could be scaled so that the largest is O height.

I agree that it could, but since these are probably (?) most useful in the
context of a five-line staff, I suggest that they remain scaled relative
to the five-line staff size, as they are at present.

I will send you a revised version of the Bravura Text font with the above
changes as soon as I can, Myke, so you can give me any further feedback.

Thanks,

Daniel

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