SMuFL text font alignment (Bravura Text, etc.)

Hello all,

I think the initial idea behind the Text version of SMuFL fonts was my own, but so far they haven’t been implemented (at least in Bravura Text) in a way that helps my particular use case, so if possible I’d like to start a discussion around that.

The idea was that text versions of SMuFL fonts would include glyphs that look properly sized for use in the context of lines or paragraphs of text without needing special formatting to prevent disrupting the overall layout.  For instance, the unicode sharp ♯ is designed so that at 12 point it fits largely within a line width of 12-14 points.  Similarly for a unicode flat ♭ and other characters that have been included in the various unicode standards .  Some symbols such as most implementations of quarter note ♩ haven’t worked as well, but the general principle is to try to scale everything so it fits within a line.  This means though that the proportions between the symbols is often distorted, such as putting a sharp next to a note: ♯♩ the sharp is way too big for use in music notation next to the note, but it is very clear in text (and in general, one wouldn’t use these two symbols adjacent to each other).

I was wondering if the utility of Bravura Text and other SMuFL text-fonts would be improved if such a principle were adhered to — so clefs would be much smaller than normal and accidentals, ornaments, etc. would be much larger than normal.  Ideally, characters that might be used near each other would be scaled such that they would generally maintain their visual clarity, but fitting within a line would override this concern (e.g., a whole note would be only a little larger than the notehead of a half note with stem, and that would be the same size as a quarter, eighth, sixteenth, and possibly 32nd note, but a 512th note would need to be shrunk dramatically in order to fit).  Probably, symbols such as raise and lower staff positions would not be implemented in a text font (or would be compacted so much as to make little difference).  I realize that my initial proposal must have been quite unclear, but I can imagine many good uses for such a font standard, such as in the user interface for notation software (right now, Noteflight uses .svg files for its user interface, but it could be done with a text font like this one).

Thanks for listening.

Best,
Myke

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Michael Scott Cuthbert

Faculty Director, Digital Humanities, MIT             4-215
Associate Professor of Music, MIT           +1.413.575.6024
cuthbert@mit.edu<mailto:cuthbert@mit.edu>                    http://www.trecento.com