Re: locus notation for spatial music

I'd like to support the inclusion of these glyphs (representing the 3-d 
position of a sound with respect to a single listener) in SMuFL. The 
principle looks very convincing.

Inclusion in SMuFL does not mean that Locus-Regular_v1.0.ttf would be 
the only font to include these characters. If the characters are going 
to be included in Bravura, they should probably be reviewed by Bravura's 
authors.

All the best,
James Ingram
(notator)


Am 28.02.2021 um 00:46 schrieb Douglas Blumeyer:
> Hello my fellow MNCG folks,
>
> At present, SMuFL lacks any way of notating spatial music. Luís 
> Zanforlin’s locus notation 
> <http://luiszanforlin.com/projects/project003/project_page.html> is an 
> excellent solution to the problem, and I’d like to get it included in 
> SMuFL.
>
> It includes 26 glyphs which indicate head-relative source positions 
> from a top-down perspective. The spatial resolution is 45°; there are 
> 8 glyphs which indicate front, front right, right, back right, back, 
> back left, left, and front left. An additional 8 glyphs indicate these 
> same directions except more distantly positioned, and an additional 8 
> indicate them except more closely positioned. Then one glyph indicates 
> center position, and one glyph indicates non-directional sound.
>
> There are an additional 8 glyphs which indicate vertical source 
> position: distantly above, above, closely above, center, closely 
> below, below, distantly below, and vertically non-directional.
>
> Then there are 5 glyphs which indicate motion. A dash glyph indicates 
> motion in general from one position to another. Then there are two 
> curved arrows which indicate clockwise or counterclockwise rotation 
> while maintaining the same radius. Vertically mirrored versions of 
> these arrows are also available for when the sound is in the back, 
> which looks more natural on the page.
>
> I understand that SMuFL prefers to organize itself in chunks of 16 
> glyphs, due to the hexadecimal nature of Unicode codepoints. Locus 
> notation contains a total of 26 + 8 + 1 + 4 = 39 glyphs, so it would 
> need 3 sets of 16 codepoints for a total of 48 codepoints (leaving 9 
> leftover for later if need arises).
>
> I have worked with Luís (cc’d here) to prepare a list of glyphnames 
> and descriptions. Would there be anything else required?
>
> The glyphs can be found in this font: 
> http://luiszanforlin.com//downloads/Locus-Regular_v1.0.ttf 
> <http://luiszanforlin.com//downloads/Locus-Regular_v1.0.ttf>
>
> Once codepoints are assigned, I can prepare a modified version of the 
> Bravura Font with the correct glyphs in the correct positions.
>
> By the way, Luís and I are open to any feedback folks here may have on 
> the craft of the glyphs. Luís designed them himself, and we both think 
> they look acceptable. But neither he nor I are professional font 
> designers, so we’re concerned we may be missing opportunities to 
> optimize the design, whether for legibility or synergy with other 
> symbol symbols (e.g. should line thicknesses match staff line 
> thickness, etc.)
>
> Thanks in advance for your consideration,
>
> Douglas
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