Fw: [smufl] Add new 'Fingering' range

Sorry – forgot to send this reply to the mailing list.

----- Forwarded by Daniel Spreadbury/SMTG on 19/04/2016 16:36 -----

From:   Daniel Spreadbury/SMTG
To:     "Jan Rosseel" <jan@scora.net>
Date:   19/04/2016 16:35
Subject:        RE: [smufl] Add new 'Fingering' range


"Jan Rosseel" <jan@scora.net> wrote on 19/04/2016 16:25:14:

> As someone said: zero is used in strings (not only guitars) for an 
> open string. 

Yes, fair enough.

> And 6&7? Talk to a trombone player. 7 slide positions. Not exactly 
> "fingerings" but numbers are numbers, right? 

Given that Arabic numerals are exceptionally well handled by just about 
any text font you can name, the only reason to encode these digits for 
fingering at all is if they have a special appearance specific to music 
that cannot be easily obtained using just about any text font you can 
name. The intention is to encode the slightly squat, bold "didone" digits 
that you typically see in published music, which are similar in style 
(though not identical to) those found in the bold weight of a typeface 
like Modern.

If brass players, with their multifarious ways of describing slide 
positions, valves, attachments, and so on, tend to use a variety of 
standard Arabic numerals with enclosures, then I would propose that we do 
not need to encode these in SMuFL, as these characters are well 
represented by existing text fonts.

In general, our rule with characters that are well represented by text 
fonts is not to encode them in SMuFL: only if they have an appearance that 
is specific to music should they be included. We have ranges of digits for 
time signatures, tuplets, octave markings, figured bass, and we have some 
(but not all) of the alphabetic characters for function theory symbols. I 
am not opposed to including another range of digits for fingering, but I 
do not want to end up encoding e.g. ranges of boxed and circled digits as 
well, as these kinds of enclosures are easy for consuming applications to 
create themselves, and failing that there are many fonts available that 
include support for enclosures around digits of various kinds as well.

Daniel


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