[smufl-discuss] Re: SMuFL Metadata generation

[dspreadbury]

Knut wrote:

> From my (somewhat) limited understanding, a large amount of metadata
> will have to be generated to make the font truly compatible with
> SMuFL, in addition to the unique character mapping. I’m neither a
> seasoned font developer, nor in possession of any sort of
> programming knowledge. JSON is also unfamiliar territory to me, but
> the different kinds of metadata needed seems pretty clear to me from
> reading through the SMuFL guidelines. However, since the amount of
> metadata seems to large to be compiled manually, I’m not quite sure
> how to go about the process of collecting it.
>
> I’ve been using FontLab to edit and generate the fonts, but there
> doesn’t seem to be a way to generate the metadata from there.

I'm very pleased to hear that you're considering making your new font
SMuFL-compliant.

We are looking into making available a couple of FontLab scripts that
should help you with producing metadata in the right kind of format.

The first script will add the canonical glyph name for each glyph, taking
them from the glyph names JSON file and adding them to the 'Comment'
field. In order for this to work, the glyphs will already need to be at
the appropriate SMuFL code point: if you haven't done that yet, and your
font is currently laid out like e.g. Sonata, Maestro or another
Finale-compatible font, then that's the first step we'll need to work on.
(It's possible we may be able to help you with a script to at least
partially automate the process of adding new glyphs at the appropriate
SMuFL code points and copying the paths/outlines from the corresponding
existing glyphs, depending on how your font is currently laid out.)

Having added the glyph names to each glyph in the font, the second script
will export some basic JSON metadata. This would include the glyph
bounding boxes, and any anchors that you have specified; the script won't,
however, be able to add any of these anchors itself. I would recommend
that you at least specify the stemUpNW and stemDownSE anchors for your
most important noteheads, and the cutOut... anchors for the most important
accidentals as a starting point. That shouldn't take too long.

Between those two scripts, you should be able to produce at least a basic
set of metadata for your font, which should get you started. When we have
something ready for you to try, we'll contact you directly.

Daniel

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