[smufl-discuss] Re: Various remarks

[dspreadbury]

Peter wrote:

> - I dearly miss the rectangular breve notehead, as stylistic
> alternative for the whole note with double strokes (U+E0C0/U+E200),
> which IMHO is not suitable for a decent modern edition of
> Renaissance and (early) Baroque music.

Myke Cuthbert made a similar request a few weeks ago, and I have made a
note to include this in the next revision.

> - I could see use for the encoding of an invisible barline. Although
> it's not much of a glyph, it could be useful to break unmeasured
> music, cadenzas etc. It has parallels in the text-oriented parts of
> Unicode (Zero width non-joiner and the like).

If an invisible barline falls in a forest, does it make a noise?!

Do you propose that such a glyph should have the same width as a regular,
non-invisible barline? I'm not sure there is a great need for it, myself,
but if others in the community agree it should be added, I'm open to
persuasion.

> - There are upside-down and mirrored versions of G and F clef (U
> +E080-E084). If you want to be complete, there should be the
> mirrored upside-down variety as well. (Admittedly, I have no
> personal use for any of those :).
> Cf. Analytics section: there are 4 Th-symbols for marking a fugue
> theme (U+E8E4-E8E7) including reversed upside-down.

It's not necessarily a goal to include every *possible* glyph: ideally,
just the useful ones! The upside-down and mirrored versions are for canons
etc.; to my knowledge, nobody has yet found a use for both upside-down
*and* reversed ones, but if somebody knows different, please chime in.

> - On page 39 of the smufl-0.7-draft there is a description of U+E0AA
> (timeSigFractionOneThird) and U+E0AB (timeSigFractionTwoThirds).
> Apparently, the fractions '1/3' and '2/3' (or ligatures thereof) do
> not have a glyph in the current font and are represented by a boxed '?'.

I think this is an error in the PDF, as Bravura does certainly include
these characters. I will check the next revision carefully.

> - Holds and pauses: I think a caesura (U+E50B) can be a single
> oblique stroke as well. Stylistic alternative?

Do you have any references for this? It's no problem to add it.

> - Gregorian chant: a section that's probably not investigated yet,
> but it's weird that the encoding provides for several ligatures, but
> lacks the basic punctum and rhombus. I have seen simple church music
> using only those (on a 5-line staff).

Yes, the current selection matches that from the Unicode Musical Symbols
range, which was of necessity limited in scope. I'm certainly open to
proposals about how to make this range more useful. If somebody in the
community has a thought about how to encode this range, please let me
know.

> - I am by no means an expert on Arel-Ezgi-Uzdilek accidentals, but I
> happen to know a few words of Turkish. The word 'küçük' (in the
> description of U+E4C1 and U+E4C6) should be written with a ç (c-
> cedilla) instead of plain c. ('Mücenneb' is correct).

Thank you for the correction!

> - String techniques: the '+' sign (U+E654) is not a "thumb
> pizzicato", but a left hand pizzicato (and never played with the thumb
even).

Hmm. This should probably be in the 'Plucked techniques' section, then.

> - String techniques: the thumb position symbol (U+E652) is a small
> zero with a vertical stroke underneath. Functionally and
> typographically, it is a fingering symbol, that should have a design
> corresponding with other fingerings. It is not based on a circle,
> but on a digit.

So it should look more like the stylistic alternate for snap pizzicato, as
used in German editions?

> - Repeats: U+E04A (segnoSerpent1) and U+E049 (segnoSerpent2) are
> incorrectly described as 'Short barline' and 'Tick barline'.

Oops. A manual editing problem, which will be eradicated in the next
revision.

> - A whole note (4 quarters) rest may look exactly like a whole bar
> rest, but they differ semantically. What is the SMuFL policy here?
> In comparison: the '+' symbol is not typographically different in
> the case of U+E5F5 (brassMuteClosed), U+E5FB
> (brassHarmonMuteStemOpen), U+E654 (stringsThumbPizzicato [should be
> left hand pizz.]), and U+E884 (handbellsMalletBellSuspended). Aren't
> all those occurrences just various interpretations of a single,
> generic articulation symbol?

That's true, but they are all in different groups within the range. It
seems redundant to include two identical glyphs in the same range if they
are never drawn differently.

> - In the bravura_metadata.json file (and in the example in smufl 0.
> 7, p.24), the font version is marked:
> {
>     "fontName": "Bravura",
>     "fontVersion": 0.3,
> (...)
> I would not use a numeric (unquoted) version string, since it's not
> really a number (i.e. something to do calculations with). In
> practice, software version descriptors may contain letters or
> additional subdivisions (e.g. "4.6b.022"), so I'd quote it as a text

string.

Thanks for this suggestion, which I will implement.

Daniel

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