Changing tablature font (resolved with plugin)

• Jul 31, 2024 - 08:03

Hello, I'm aware this topic has been pretty beaten around and there is a lot of frustration around this. I am trying the tablature font workaround that allows me to use my own custom font for the tablature numbers as opposed to those native to MuseScore. The workaround involves editing your custom .ttf metadata and/or name (I can't really figure out which) to match that of one of the "baked in" fonts. I cannot, however, figure out where on earth in the program files the baked in fonts are. I have no idea what to name mine. They aren't under resources/fonts to my knowledge, or at least they do not bear the same name as what is displayed under the advanced staff style options for the tabs. How can I achieve this? I have my font ready to go.

I did already try naming my font mscoreTabRenaisssanceBold.ttf but no luck. Tried removing the extra s too to see if it was a typo.

The default fonts are simply not an option.

Edit Aug 1, 2024: See below for (my best attempt at, though it does seem to be working) an MS4 port of yonah_ag 's original bold tab plugin. This should work for using any custom font for your tablature.

Attachment Size
TabBoldCustom.qml 8.47 KB
TabBoldsmallstaff.qml 8.47 KB

Comments

• Jul 31, 2024 - 08:14

"my own custom font for the tablature numbers"
Just out of curiosity, could you attach a picture of this custom font, to see what it looks like.

"The default fonts are simply not an option"
Which ones have you tried, and what don't you like?

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• Jul 31, 2024 - 08:28

Thanks for the reply. Here's the custom font. It is identical to the renaissance font, but I have changed the numbers. I am a novice to font design, so just copied the glyphs in from a font I like and it passed font validation. Maybe more info than is necessary, but I am a graphic designer making a hardcover book of sheet music and tabs for my band. All of the font work is extremely intricate and I'd like for the tab numbers to be within the aesthetic. I am trying to look within the system files now for any directory or something that mentions these fonts but no luck thus far.

Attachment Size
Screen Shot 2024-07-31 at 2.26.09 AM.png 229.12 KB

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• Jul 31, 2024 - 09:06

Was combing through the other threads on this and saw you had provided input there too. Was there ever any success with the workaround? I cannot figure out how to get it to work but I don't think I've done it correctly yet. Seems to be very tricky getting MuseScore to prefer an outside font for one of the native ones.

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• Jul 31, 2024 - 09:19

I could be wrong (I haven't mastered this subject), but I really doubt it's possible. Or I suppose, unless you're a programmer and build your own version.
Having said that, not even Guitar Pro (a guitar program, let's say) has such a choice of fonts, unless I missed it in the latest version (I'm still on version 7.5).
An example of a score with GP:
black sabbath.jpg

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• Jul 31, 2024 - 17:02

Hey Jojo, this is really cool and I will probably use it for my traditional notation. However, I’m not seeing anything about changing the font for the tablature. SMuFL fonts are just for traditional notation, correct? Do tablature fonts also need their own directory / metadata file et cetera? I am not the most experienced with this sort of thing but can follow directions.

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• Jul 31, 2024 - 17:21

Ooh, that looks exactly like what might help. I am super inexperienced with GitHub and this question is almost embarrassing, but are these files something I need to download or am I just looking at MuseScore’s open source files? I’m away from my computer right now, but maybe if I found the fonts_tablature.xml file and changed the font family / display name to my font, it would use my font? Thanks so much. Pulling my hair out over this haha.

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• Jul 31, 2024 - 17:42

probably the source code needs to be changed
e.g.
mscoreTab.ttf:
src/engraving/engravingmodule.cpp: ":/fonts/mscoreTab.ttf",
src/app/CMakeLists.txt: ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/fonts/mscoreTab.ttf
src/framework/fonts/fonts_MScore.qrc: ../../../fonts/mscoreTab.ttf
Perhaps on other places also. To test

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• Jul 31, 2024 - 18:04

Hmm.. that might be above my paygrade (I’ll still try it) but I think the workaround involved basically changing the font in-use rather than going in the source code and changing every instance of the font name to a different font. However, I am actually unable to find the fret font. mscoreTab.ttf doesn’t seem to exist anywhere on my computer after looking through all program files. I have tried changing the metadata of my font to all sorts of things, like mscoreTab.ttf. Is it possible for something like that only to exist in code? Or is it using a font native to my computer? A mystery to me.

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• Jul 31, 2024 - 19:29

Hey Jojo, I have successfully gotten 3.7 running (though not on MacOS despite trying every piece of advice). I'm on a Windows PC now. Would you be able to tell me where the staff fonts for the tabs are pulled from? I can't find any font files within 3.7. Installing the bold tabs from the other thread under the renaissance name also did nothing.

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• Jul 31, 2024 - 19:42

One question I still haven't really had answered is this: the information for the tab font has to come from somewhere. Where is the tab font? Is it in resources / fonts? Is it using one of those? If so, can I just alter one of those fonts? Or are the tab fonts using a font that is native to my system? I would be so happy if I can just find whatever file it is and edit the glyphs.

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• Jul 31, 2024 - 21:56

If it's ok, here's a link to it since we can't attach .otf files. I've just downloaded MS3.6 and am poking around. @scorster was kind enough to advise me that the font workaround does NOT work for MS4. I was able to get 3.7 on my Windows PC where I used your plugin but have moved to MacOS now for convenience, since that is where all of my scores and fonts are.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xNqSUIN67sR0fhizalQ-Kgk2tg-QFU3s/view?…

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• Jul 31, 2024 - 22:45

Hey, actually, I got it! The original workaround works. You just have to be very careful as to not change the font metadata (for the renaissance one linked in the original workaround) when putting in new glyphs. FontForge kept wanting to change it. MS3 is now using my font for the tabs but I can confirm that this does not work at all for MS4. Unfortunately, I did all of my scores and formatting in MS4, which will be pretty tiresome to copy over. Worth it, though.

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• Aug 1, 2024 - 00:45

Agh.. nevermind. MS3 has caused a myriad of formatting issues that far surpass the importance of a font. I’ve tried basically every other extraneous solution including PDF editors but have now resigned myself to manually erasing and inputting the numbers in a better font by hand. Pretty much begging at this point for MuseScore to just implement user tab fonts as a feature. It would save me a couple of weeks of monotony and I’d pay money for it.

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• Aug 1, 2024 - 02:44

This is painful to hear, especially with your publishing deadline.

There's an official Github request from late 2022 that was labeled P1 (priority 1) and tagged for implementation in the pending 4.4 release. But a month ago it was demoted to the MuseScore Studio Backlog ...

     https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/14775

BTW, regarding the "Myriad of formatting issues"—so the rest of us are aware—can you post a few before/after formatting issues you've encountered when opening a MS4 score in MS3.7?

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• Aug 1, 2024 - 03:29

It's a shame that museScore hasn't yet prioritized flexibility regarding font choices.

It's understood that if a scorist uses a font that a user doesn't have on their system there's a font conflict to resolve. To avoid such font conflicts MuseScore enforces a consistent, minimal, and seriously limiting set of available fonts.

Requests and options are detailed in the following post in hopes of moving beyond these limitations:

https://musescore.org/en/node/299448#comment-1046530

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• Aug 1, 2024 - 22:10

Agh.. yeah, here's hoping as I will have to create another one of these books down the line. It might not be 2 weeks bad to manually change the numbers via Photoshop for me but maybe half that.

Regarding the formatting, the tremolos, of which the music requires many, have their display reset when importing to MS3.7. A lot of the tremolos go straight through the tablature number and sometimes even the note head on the traditional notation variants of the same music. They are all offset relative to which string or staff line the note is on and have to be individually nudged downward to their correct position that MS4 puts them in by default. Unselecting the tremolos on these notes in MS3.7 and then re-applying them unfortunately does not make a difference for me.

The measure spacing also gets obliterated on the import and I have actually seen quite a few note heads within one another. You can just respace the measures, though. I don't think line or page breaks carried over which is pretty difficult for a few hundred pages of multi-voice music.

The music also frequently employs palm mutes and often uses them in complicated ways across a phrase, so I opted to use a system of heavy lines that cut in and out over notes that need or need not be muted, rather than notate "P.M." for each note or string of muted notes. The latter method would make it unclear which notes are to be muted in a dense string of variables. Anywho, I used MS4 for this styling and it doesn't seem that the prior versions have it. My mutes disappeared regardless but it wouldn't be the worst to replace.

@yonah_ag got the font working via the bold tabs plugin and suggested the plug-in may work in MS4. I'm gonna go give that a shot.

Many thanks to you all for your care on the subject. I really appreciate the assistance as a novice.

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• Aug 1, 2024 - 22:59

If you experiment with yonah_ag's plug-in (in MS 3.7) I think you'll observe that it adds text objects with an opaque background that "cover" the extant tablature numbers.

Sounds like this is similar to what you might attempt in Photoshop, but fully automated.

UPDATE: I wasn't far off but the author's comments explain it properly! The tablature numbers are set to white, while retaining their opaque background; then the plugin adds perfectly aligned a Staff Text objects showing the appropriate fret numbers with the desired font.

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• Aug 2, 2024 - 02:42

Aside from that no one has volunteered or been assigned to the task, the question is, "Why aren't these font options directly available in MuseScore tablature stave properties?"

And the ultimate goal: What about the availability of the user's full range of system fonts—with fallbacks for good MuseScore.com display?

In the four years I've used MuseScore I've seen it bestowed with some truly amazing advancements, particularly in the features needed by professional scorists. But as I've often said, important as that is: high-end professional scorists represent a finite number of those interested in notation; they are a small number compared to MuseScore's potential audience.

We all benefit from the many high-end scoring advancements—most of the time—but if there's importance in further expanding MuseScore's base that's probably achieved through appealing to amateurs. Because it's a much bigger pool. And the amateur population tends toward tablature and learning tools, like: an enhanced MS3 Play Panel, interactive games that helps people to learn to read music, step-wise playback that teaches rhythm ... and the many other features that MuseScore does/will bring to the table.

Serious attention to guitar and tablature is a good place to start. And a revived and educationally oriented Play Panel!

A simple first step could be font freedom on tablature staves.

scorster

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• Aug 1, 2024 - 22:36

Hey again, just threw it in MS4 and it crashes upon launching the plugin haha - though can't say that is surprising. I hate to ask, but how much of an endeavor would it be to port this plugin to MS4? I would be happy to throw some money your way if you'd accept it for the troubles. Many thanks for your care thus far.

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• Aug 1, 2024 - 23:32

Yes, it's my plugin. I got so frustrated with the light weight tab fonts in MS3, (compared to notation), that I eventually hit on this simple idea.

It works by setting the original tab fret number to white and adding a bold stave text positioned exactly where the fret number was. The original fret is made white rather than being hidden so that the opaque bounding box is kept and the nice little break in the string lines is thereby also kept.

Because of this processing it is essential to keep a master copy of your score which does not have these stave texts applied because it is a manual, painstaking effort to remove them if you don't immediately use the plugin's Undo button.

I do not know the plugin API at all for MS4 but maybe someone else can help. If tab frets can be set to white and stave texts added via an MS4 plugin then it should be possible to convert it. If someone can confirm whether this is possible then I can probably do the coding — and definitely no money required since this is how the MuseScore.org licensing works and I really like it.

Here is a custom version of the plugin which has the usual bold capabilities but also the option for using your custom font without bold, (since it already has a nice semi-bold look to it).

TabBoldCustom.png

TabBoldCustom.qml

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• Aug 2, 2024 - 02:48

Hey, I got it working! I am over the moon. Thank you so much, firstly, as well as to Scorster and Jojo and all else with suggestions. This will save me a ton of labor. All it took to port it over to MS4 was to change all instances of TextField to TextEdit. I followed the aforementioned porting guide and that was the only applicable tip, along with nesting the plugin file within its own subfolder of Plugins. The only (very minor) issue is that when applying the plugin to a small staff, it skews the text more than is desired but given that these are staff objects I'm sure it will be very easy to go in and give them a nudge. :-) Maybe somebody can touch this up if they have the skills and desire to do so.

If anyone has followed this and wishes to do the same, here is the (barely) edited version of @yonah_ag 's original plugin. My font is in a Google Drive link above if you'd like it. If you want to use your own font, I believe it'd be as simple as looking for the instances of "MScoreTabulature" and replacing them with the name of your own font. Since the plugin creates staff objects, you can do something maybe even simpler and select all of the newly created staff objects, then swap their font just like you can with normal staff text.

Very happy and thankful for the forum here.

Edit: Nevermind the small staff issue. I just realized the offsets are totally programmable. What I did was figure out the perfect string spacing (1.05 by default for small staf) , X offset, and Y offset for the small staff, and then made a copy of the plugin with those numbers as a new default. Thus, two separate plugins for the regular staff and small staff, and even more time saved.

Attachment Size
Screen Shot 2024-08-01 at 8.34.10 PM.png 306.21 KB
TabBoldCustom.qml 8.46 KB

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• Aug 2, 2024 - 08:02

Nice!

I haven't come across small staves before. What are they for? Is this just an MS4 feature or is it also in MS3? It would be possible to have 2 sets of fields in the plugin user interface to deal with this situation if it's common but your 2 plugin solution is much simpler.

Thanks for sharing the font and MS4 compatible plugin.

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