[smufl-discuss] Towards SMuFL 1.0

[dspreadbury]

Dear SMuFL community,

I started work on SMuFL almost exactly a year ago, though at the time I
didn't realise it. Steinberg's in-development scoring application needs
music fonts, so I started to build one. Having worked on music fonts for
another scoring application for many years and been hamstrung by retaining
compatibility with third-party fonts that originated in the 1980s, and
hence not being able to properly use Unicode and OpenType features, I
quickly decided to make a clean break with the past, and not design our
new fonts to be Sonata-like.

As work progressed on designing the look of the font that would eventually
come to be called Bravura, it became obvious that a new approach to
organising the glyphs in the font would be needed. I shared my early
thoughts on the standard with a handful of expert music engravers and
editors in the following weeks, and it quickly became clear that more
heads were better than one: this should really be a community effort, and
it could conceivably provide a real, designed solution to the problem of
using different fonts in different music software (rather than the
imperfect *de facto* solution that had been in place since other font
designers started copying Cleo Huggins' mnemonic glyph layout for Sonata).

Progress to date
==========
After announcing SMuFL at the Music Encoding Conference in Mainz in May of
last year, it has been exciting to see the community start to take off. A
few statistics:

* There were around 800 recommended glyphs in the first public release
(0.4) of SMuFL. The current version (0.7) defines more than 1850
recommended glyphs, and hundreds more recommended ligatures and stylistic
alternates.
* More than a dozen subject area experts around the world have contributed
to the selection of glyphs to be included in SMuFL to date.
* There have been more than 330 messages on the SMuFL mailing list to
date, and the list has more than 70 subscribers.

SMuFL has also received support from software developers large and small.
For example, the developers of MuseScore (www.musescore.org) have already
started work on integrating it, and it is expected to be a part of the
forthcoming MuseScore 2.0 release. I have also been contacted by several
other developers, who have expressed their intention to support SMuFL in
their applications.

Our reference font, Bravura, has also been downloaded from our web site
hundreds of times, and is already being used in the current versions of
Rising Software's ear training and music theory applications, Auralia and
Musition, on both Windows/Mac and iOS.

If you are working on an implementation of SMuFL or are using Bravura in
your software, please let me know, as I am very interested to track the
progress of these projects.

SMuFL 0.8
======
As things stand, version 0.8 of SMuFL (and Bravura) currently includes the
following changes since version 0.7:

* Based on community feedback, added clarification that code points for
glyphs may change until SMuFL reaches version 1.0, after which point
existing code points will become immutable.
* Glyphs in SMuFL encoded in the primary range of U+E000–U+F3FF are no
longer considered “mandatory”, but rather they are “recommended”: in order
to be considered SMuFL-compliant, a font need not implement every
recommended glyph, just as a text font need not implement every Unicode
code point in order to be considered Unicode-compliant. Fonts need only
implement those glyphs that are appropriate for their intended use at the
correct SMuFL code points in order to be considered SMuFL-compliant.
* Changed guidelines for metrics of text-like glyphs (e.g. dynamics,
D.C./D.S. markings in repeats) in fonts intended for use in scoring
applications, such that it is recommended that the x-height of such glyphs
is around 1 staff space (0.25 em).
* Added Ivan Wyschnegradsky’s system of 72-EDO accidentals.
* Added Britten’s curlew sign for a pause of an indeterminate length.
* Added push/pull signs for accordion.
* Added slashed sharp/flat accidentals used by John Tavener in his
Byzantine-inspired choral works.
* Added separate noteheads for white mensural notation.
* Added quasi-random wiggly lines (wiggleRandom1, wiggleRandom2,
wiggleRandom3, wiggleRandom4) to multi-segment lines range.
* Added flipped and large versions of constant circular motion
(wiggleCircularConstantFlipped, wiggleCircularConstantLarge,
wiggleCircularConstantFlippedLarge) to multi-segment lines range.
* Added combining top/middle/bottom segments for black and white
rectangular note clusters.
* Added 2, 3, 4 and 6-dot divisi indicators for measured tremolos
(tremoloDivisiDots2, tremoloDivisiDots3, etc.) to tremolos range.
* Added clavichord bebung glyphs for 2, 3, and 4 finger movements
(keyboardBebung2DotsAbove, keyboardBebung3DotsBelow, etc.) to the keyboard
techniques range.
* Added double-height parentheses and brackets (csymParensLeftTall,
csymParensRightTall, csymBracketLeftTall, csymBracketRightTall) to the
chord symbols range.
* Added recommendation for stylistic alternates for time signature digits
0–9 suitable for use as large time signatures shown above/between staves
(timeSig0Large through timeSig9Large).

Due to the nature of the additions, there are a substantial number of code
point changes between SMuFL 0.7 and 0.8.

Next steps
=======
The goal, then, is to release version 0.8, and then to reach version 1.0
as soon as possible, so that the code points can be stabilised and
developers can implement support for SMuFL with confidence. Per recent
discussion in the community, once SMuFL reaches version 1.0, neither code
points nor canonical glyph names for recommended glyphs will change.

This means that if more glyphs remain to be added to a given range in
future than unused code points remaining in that range, new non-contiguous
ranges will have to be created elsewhere in the Private Use Area to
accommodate these glyphs. (This is not really a problem, since ultimately
the actual code point used for a given glyph is arbitrary, but for the
sake of tidiness, if nothing else, it is appealing to group all
generically similar glyphs together if possible.)

In my view, the two things that stand in the way of reaching version 1.0
are the following:

* Implementing outstanding requests for glyphs to be included.
To my knowledge, the only specific requests outstanding at present are
from Mark Adler and Michael Good at MakeMusic, and SMuFL 0.8 will resolve
those requests. There are a couple of non-specific outstanding issues
(e.g. Maurizio Gavioli has expressed that perhaps there is more to be done
in the area of Medieval and Renaissance notation, and Steven Horn has
suggested that there may be more glyphs to add relating to lute notation
and tablature), but otherwise at present there are no significant known
omissions.

* Creating glyph registration and metrics guidelines for fonts intended
for use in text-based applications.
To date I have focused on fonts intended for use in scoring applications,
but I believe defining the guidelines for fonts intended for use in
text-based applications should be completed (and a reference font
produced) before SMuFL reaches version 1.0.

I am interested to hear from the community whether anything else should be
added to this list.

Likewise, if anybody in the community is harbouring any requests for new
glyphs or ranges of glyphs to be added, please do not delay in making
those requests as soon as possible.

And, of course, if anybody in the community would like to volunteer to
assist with the definition of the design guidelines for fonts intended for
use in text-based applications, that help would be greatly appreciated by
me.

My proposal is that I set a deadline (perhaps the end of March 2014, if
that is not too soon) for the community to submit proposals for
consideration for SMuFL 1.0, and then finalise the 1.0 release as soon as
possible after that, though at the present time it's difficult to estimate
how long that might take without knowledge of what proposals I might
receive.

Thanks once more to everybody in the community for their contributions to
date. I am looking forward to reaching the milestone of a version 1.0
release.

Daniel

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