MScore font for texts, anyone?
Hi,
MuseScore uses some internal fonts, like the MScore font (and the MScore1 font, which is a subset of the former), for its drawing and for the textual symbols reached via the symbol palette.
These fonts are quite 'strange' as text fonts (most glyphs occupy only a small portion of the square, huge internal leading, small visible size compared to pitch, questionable left and right sidebearing and base lining, and so on).
This is probably required when the symbols are used in the complex 2D arrangement of drawing a score, but give poor results when the symbols are inserted in linear texts.
1) Is there any interest for a new font, using the same symbols but organized in a more standard way, textually-wise and to be used for texts only (or mostly)?
2) It is preferred to have it as an internal font (like now) or could it be separate (requiring some installation) ?
3) Should it replace MScore1 or be added to it?
4) Any other advice? I can do the font itself but, as making fonts is always time consuming, I would prefer to star the right way since the beginning.
Thanks,
M.
Comments
If I remember correctly, MScore is used for the actual music and should not be changed. MScore1 is used for inline text (for example the symbols in the F2 palette) and actually does use more of the square than MScore.
I am interested in having most musical symbols in a font suitable for inlining in normal text. MScore1 was created for this purpose. ITs currently generated from a metafont script borrowed from lilypond.
2) For now its easiest to have it as an internal font until someone finds out how to install a font on all supported platforms.
3) It should replace MScore1
4) To be useful i think some elementary symbols must be there in several permutations (note head + stem + hook)
It would be great if all new glyphs were done in metafont using the current build scheme. But metafont is complex and difficult to handle (at least for me) so i think we should decide to drop it.
3) Replacing MScore1 would be the obvious choice, but I realized that, if it is replaced with a font with larger glyphs, in-line texts in existing scores would be broken typographically (at least where they use MScore1).
I'll try to arrive at a first draft of the new font as simple as possible, then we could decide (and add more glyphs, if necessary).
4) If I remember correctly, the decision was already made to drop the metafont source and use FontForge files as sources, at least for the main MScore font.
Thanks,
M.
In reply to Thanks by Miwarre
Could we consider using the Unicode conventions for music symbol placement where possible? It would interface with other fonts better if we went that direction.
In reply to Could we consider using the by David Bolton
Unicode points for musical symbols are rather complete and would be a reasonable candidate for a mapping (this would also clean most of the glyphs currently mapped to the ugly Private Area).
However:
1) They lie in Plane 1, outside the BMP, and many programmes still have problems with points outside the BMP (I'm not sure MuseScore itself is at full comfort with surrogates)
2) Re-coding MScore1 will surely break any existing score using it. We will probably face this sooner or later, so only the code guru can say if it is something we can face now or at another moment. Possibly retro-compatibility can be achieved with trans-coding while reading the XML source (only for strings in MScore1, though!).
M.
I use MScore1 in piano music to match the typeface used for fingering by traditional engraving.
Even though I can't presently make it work by default as a Text Style, the new Select and Text Properties features in 0.9.6 make it relatively easy to enable.
I love the MScore1 typeface for fingering (and other things, too). I welcome its functionality!