font for tablature

• Jan 8, 2020 - 11:24

Hi,

there is no way to change the font for the tablature?

Wolfgang

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• Jan 8, 2020 - 12:00

Right click within the staff (Ctrl-Click on Mac)
Choose Staff/Part properties from the popup menu.
Open Advanced properties with the button which is located bottom-right of the top section of the Staff/Part properties window.
There you can choose between 8 different fonts for tablature

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• Dec 12, 2020 - 08:59

I've created four tablature fonts and I need the option of using them in MuseScore before I can fully adopt MuseScore as my main scorewriter.

Naturally I wonder why MuseScore limits us to eight baked-in fonts for tablature fret numbers? Without even the option to change the font Weight.

We have StaffProperties>AdvancedStyleProperites>FretMarks>Font

Would it be within reason for MuseScore to allow a Tablature staff's FretMarks>Font to be any system font (or user library font)? We have that kind of font freedom in many places within MuseScore.

As an esteemed colleague says, "If we had some eggs we could have eggs and ham, if we had some ham."

scorster

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• Dec 12, 2020 - 19:41

>> This sounds really interesting. Could you share a picture of some samples?

Some of my fonts contain proprietary concepts and encoding so first I need to decide what I want to reveal publicly.

However one font is quite simple.

I prefer san serif fonts in tablature and was stuck with Helvetica—because, in the notation apps I used, only Helvetica properly aligned itself vertically to the staff, and there was no way to tweak it's y placement overall, as we can in MuseScore. So along with addressing the y placement issue:

• I created my own set of "sans" numbers for tablature.
• I opened up the 3 because there's a tendency for a 3 on a tablature line to look like an 8.
• I raised the waist of the 8 so it shows partly above the line.
• I set glyph side bearings so double digit numbers would sit closer, side by side, without pair kerning nor the need to rely on the app to support auto kerning. As you can see, the numbers 10, 11, 12 etc. take up far less space (which was an important criteria) and regarding legibility there's no question that 10 (ten) is not 1 0 (one and zero).

TAB Helvetica numbers.png

TAB Sans test on staff.png

I also created a handwritten tab number font, but mostly for promotional imagery, and later found it worked well in Chord Symbols, especially at small sizes:

  Fat Felt chords symbols 01 small.jpg

FatFelt Music Symbols.jpg

Overall that test font looks like this:

Fat Felt font test Lorem Ipsum and Special chars.png

Interestingly, all these font images look heavy posted here on the forum. Maybe that's a PNG thing.
Suffice it to say they need a little tweaking, but they are not as gloppy or bold as they appear here.

scorster

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• Dec 12, 2020 - 20:31

This looks good, very clear, and I like how you've tackled 2 digit fret numbers.

I much prefer a sans-serif font for TAB but find that the built-in ones are too light, (with no semi-bold, let alone bold option), especially compared with notation which appears darker because of the noteheads. I had hoped to use Segoe Semi-bold on Windows 10 but soon found that external fonts are not supported.

In MS I disallow the tab lines from showing through the numbers so the problem with 3 looking like 8 is avoided. I also make most non-fret elements grey rather than black in an attempt to make the fret numbers more prominent.

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• Dec 12, 2020 - 21:14

>> yonah_ag wrote >>This looks good, very clear, and I like how you've tackled 2 digit fret numbers.

> Thanks. The side bearing settings allow me to work with narrow measures while preserving legality of >9 frets. Really helps in a score like Barrios Mangore's La Catedral, Prelude:

      La Catedral - TAB Sans font test.png

>> I find that the built-in [tablature fonts] are too light

> I created a single weight fontFace, but when I get back into FontLab (after a large system update here) I'll check to see if it creates reasonable bold and light variants; if they are good enough I could manually tweak the details. Otherwise it again would be all by hand.

>> In MS I disallow the tab lines from showing through the numbers so the problem with 3 looking like 8 is avoided.

> Good point.

>>I also make most non-fret elements grey rather than black in an attempt to make the fret numbers more prominent.

I like that idea! There's a style to set the color of staff lines.

Wonderful if you can post an example.

scorster

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• Dec 13, 2020 - 17:32

The issue with this is always that this would mean your score could not be shared with others who don't have that font (eg, on musescore.com). So in general, this is not something anyone has really been to keen to support.

But it should be noted, if you don't care about sharing your score, and it's your own custom font, you could simply name it the same as one of the built in fonts, then install it normally, MuseScore will see it in preference to the built in version.

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• Dec 13, 2020 - 17:54

Perhaps there could be a fallback internal font for missing external fonts and this could be defined in the score setup as "Free Serif" or "Free Sans". This would allow normal sharing. Something similar already works for custom soundfonts that users have installed. The score can still be shared but simply plays back without the custom sounds.

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• Dec 13, 2020 - 17:59

Marc Sabatella wrote

>> this would mean your score could not be shared with others (eg, on musescore.com) who don't have that font

Understood. Although I expect to share many more scores on MuseScore.com the vast majority of my scores are purely for in-house use, so sharing source scores doesn't heavily influence my opinion on this matter. My prevailing concern is the ability to print and create PDFs of my work with my tablature fonts. (At some point I could share or license my fonts, and MuseScore could be a likely partner.)

Marc Sabatella wrote

>> ... you could simply name your custom font the same as one of the built in fonts, then install it normally, MuseScore will see it in preference to the built in version.

You mean employ a font managing trick? If so, I really appreciate the advice, but I really prefer not to extend workarounds to the system level. Update: BTW the font naming trick works in 3.6, 3.7 but not in MuseScore Studio 4.3.

I understand and admire that MuseScore encourages people to share their scores. It's a brilliant and reasonably well executed community model. And it naturally follows that MuseScore wants to ensure compatibility, and it does so by limiting font choice to those that development "bakes in" at compile.

As you say, there's some logic to using "internal" fonts—because there's no guarantee that others have the same fonts installed on their system. So limiting tablature fonts is one way to enable reliable sharing, but it also shuts down many options for those wanting to customize their scores when they have no intent or need to share them. It's actually very limiting.

Could there be a happy medium?

How about a "Sharing-safe Font Compatibility" checkbox, on by default. When I toggle that off I have access to all my system font, including the fonts I've created. And museScore could offer:

• font substitution whenever a font is not found
• a choice of a fallback built-in font. In fact, MuseScore does this automatically uses a fallback font I publish to .com using a lyric font other than FreeSan or FreeSerif.

If I set the lyrics font to Optima MuseScore.com displays FreeSans as the fallback font. Why not also for a tablature fret number font? In either case the score would still be compatible for sharing.

And in the world of web fonts (@font-face in CSS speak) there would be flexibility limited only by the number of fonts in the repository.

A little more freedom would go a long way in supporting and fostering more creativity and innovation! And the user shouldn't have to know how to compile their own version of MuseScore to add fonts to the list of those baked-in.

Despite the options discussed, the simplest solution is to allow users to use system fonts where they want, warn them of compatibility consequences, offer a fallback font, and let the scorist get on with their work using the font they want.

One last (slightly off topic) comment about baked-in fonts.

When an app references an "internal" font, and there's no comparable system font distributed and installed by the app, inevitably there arise seriously limiting PDF and SVG editing issues. Plain and simple, when a vector editing app doesn't can't reference a particular font it can't display or print its glyphs.

scorster

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• Jul 31, 2024 - 07:58

Hi Marc, sorry to dig up an old thread. When you refer to naming it as a built in font, where exactly are those built in fonts? Underneath resources / fonts in the source files, I can't find any by the names of what appears in the tablature font options. What should I rename my custom font to (metadata included) to force MuseScore to recognize it for tablature? Thank you.

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• Jul 31, 2024 - 13:56

I doubt that hack would work anymore. For one thing, I think the bug where MuseScore would ignore its own fonts in some cases has probably been fixed by now. For another, I think those font names in the dialog are actual just aliases for other fonts. See https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/blob/master/fonts/fonts_tablatur… in the source code. Looks like the characters mostly all come from MScoreTablature but just override specific glyphs as needed.

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• Jul 31, 2024 - 16:29

Re: scorster • Dec 12, 2020 - 08:59
I've created four tablature fonts and I need the option of using them in MuseScore before I can fully adopt MuseScore as my main scorewriter.

Do you still have these fonts? I could give them a try with the TAB Bold plugin.

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• Jun 20, 2020 - 20:12

I wish to change the font in tablature because the default font is too light for me to see when printed. The problem I'm running into is that all the fonts, with the exception of the default font, display the 10th fret as an "x" instead of "10".

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• Dec 18, 2020 - 03:29

Here's another reason why I need MuseScore to allow me to set the Tablature font to any font in my system as a tablature font in MuseScore.

Presently (in 3.5.2) the slash-strum notehead symbol is far too small—because it's simply a regular slash char from the currently selected built-in tablature text font.

I could fix this in a heartbeat‚ by editing the / glyph in custom my custom tablature font—but presently there's no point because, in MuseScore, I can't access system installed fonts without:

  a) compiling it in each update
  b) performing a font hack on my system

And niether of the those options are appealing to me.

Please come up with a compatibility solution like the simple fallback suggestions in this thread.

We can set Staff Text and to any fontFace ... why not tablature too?

scorster

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• Feb 5, 2023 - 13:59

Digging into Style window, i find out there are two settings for musical font. There's a Musical symbols font, and a Musical text font. Which symbol/text does these two settings apply to? Why can't i choose Edwin there? I'm so confused.

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