[smufl-discuss] Re: Some ideas

[T.J. Usiyan]

I suggest that we set aside a range for Chord Symbol ligatures.
Because I am not completely familiar with how ligatures work, I will
propose three courses of action to complement the use of this range.

1. Along with this we establish a metadata key for what symbol the
code point represents so that the font creator can represent what text
the ligature should replace. This allows the most freedom in
implementation but presents no uniformity of what text is used for
chord symbols.

2. We agree upon a set of basic chord quality components (Major,
Minor, Diminished, Augmented, Half Diminished, Suspended, Perfect
etc…) and their code points. I think that numeric digits 0-9 would
simply be their own components. It is then up to the font creator to
decide if the ligature will be the full text ("Major"), an
abbreviation ("Maj" or "Ma"), or a symbol ("∆"). We would then combine
the ligature for Major with the number.

3. Much like option 2 except we also agree upon a fixed number of
variations for each component. I propose the three listed: Full,
Abbreviation, and Symbol. We might still use UFO or some such metadata
to hint at what exact text the abbreviation represents or we might
not.

My order of preference would be 3, 1 then 2 but I admit that I am
still very new to programmatic engraving. All of this said, my real
point is that I think Ligatures can be the foundation of a solution
for chord symbols and roman numerals. (We do not need to represent an
infinite number of roman numerals. I am not sure that we even need
more than 7) If the font creator does not implement ligatures then the
engraving program can decide what to do. No ligatures for "Major"?
Either lay it out like normal or try to get fancy but that is an
implementation detail. Maybe the ligature is there but the Application
wants to use its own methods to generate a special glyph. No problem.
(Other than the possible confusion of "why _didn't_ it use the
ligatures?")

TJ





TJ

On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 7:20 PM, Daniel Spreadbury
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> Myke wrote:
>
>> The question here is will we be assuming that people want to be
>> limited in their ability to do things based on what the scoring
>> application (if any) is able to do or not? We may be able to render
>> V6#42 properly in a chord symbol but what about in a lyric? (often
>> the easiest way to show alignment under lyrics or other analytical
>> elements). What about in text boxes and in word processing and web
>> applications?  I think that there's a not too difficult solution
>> involving providing a set of figures (numbers 1-9, flat, sharp,
>> natural, parentheses) kerned to zero width at five different
>> positions (mid-top, mid-bottom -- a la sub and superscript for two-
>> digit symbols; and top, middle, bottom for three-digit symbols).  I
>> have learned to simulate these very well in MS Word and in HTML, but
>> ironically the only place where I need a custom font is in notation
> software.
>
> This is exactly the kind of thing that seems like an inelegant hack, as I
> wrote in an earlier reply.
>
> TJ suggested in another post that he thought using ligatures could be a
> way to improve on this: TJ, would you mind elucidating on how in broad
> terms you would approach this problem?
>
>> Any comments on further beaming hints (at least the two for hook
>> left vs. hook right) to support integrating beamed notation in text-
>> based rendering?  Very useful for simplifying display such as metric
>> modulations:  <–E–E = E–E–E–>
>
> Yes, I can see that this would be useful. I've made a note to include a
> range similar in scope to e.g. the Opus Metronome font or the Metronome
> font from DVM Publications. I think it will only be truly useful in a font
> designed to be mixed with text, but that's okay!
>
> Daniel
>
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