[smufl-discuss] Various remarks

[Peter Bouma]

Hello Daniel and list members,


Thank you for the great SMuFL initiative and the work you are investing in it. It's incomprehensible that this standardisation wasn't started ages ago.
After scrutinising the last few versions of SMuFL, including 0.7, I have a few remarks, some of which may no doubt be considered pathological nitpicking :)

- 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. There is an alternative with single vertical strokes (glyph name noteDoubleWholeAlt), but that's also not the one I would prefer in, say, Schütz or Monteverdi. It is also not to be confused with the brevis (U+E998, mensuralBrevis) in the mensural notation section, which is quite different in design and purpose.
In Sibelius, I always had the option to choose the "stern" rectangular breve. I hope this option won't be lost in the SMuFL/Bravura/Steinberg world.
In this context, you'll also need the stemmed Longa which occurs as (unmeasured) final note.
See for example http://erato.uvt.nl/files/imglnks/usimg/2/28/IMSLP255426-PMLP413954-Schutz_Freue_dich_des_Weibes_SWV453.pdf

- 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).

- 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.

- 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 '?'.

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

- 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).

- 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).

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

- 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.
Apparently, fingering is not part of SMuFL, as digits are considered ordinary text, but unfortunately the thumb position symbol should conform. Numbers used for fingering are quite similar to those in use for figured bass. Maybe they could be combined.
By the way: an open string on a bowed string instrument is marked with a zero, which is not the same as the preferred symbol for harmonics (a circle), although zeroes are often used for harmonics as well, and circles for open strings, which is ugly and confusing.

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

- 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?

- 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.


All the best,

Peter Bouma
Software developer & cellist, occasional arranger/composer
Amsterdam, Netherlands
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