Hello Dick,
Thank you for your time and for trying to help me.
How does a notation system work?
Well, to render a music score the font is used just to generate the symbols and render them at specific positions on the page. The process is similar to that of rendering text but instead of writting lines of text you have to write the symbols one by one at any page postion and, previously, compute the position of each symbol. Appart of symbols generated by using a font, you also have to render lines and other graphical objects. Also text, for titles, lyric, etc.
Seems like these have to be/should be used in concert with a notation and printing system. Does that dictate how the font has to be organized?
The point is that it is not necessary to relate font symbol codes to keyboard keys. It is the music notation program who decides which symbols to use. So there is no need for organizing the glyphs in any special ordering. And yes, the font have to be used in concert with a notation and printing system. All this is also a problem from the standarization point of view.
Unicode people have allocated a certain amount of codes for music symbols but not all needed symbols are there. You could see, for example, http://www.lib.virginia.edu/dmmc/Music/UnicodeMusic/ . But there is nothing which requires that one foundry’s implementation of a music font must correspond to any other. Unicode is a recommendation, but nothing requires a foundry to follow it.
So, in practise, there are no two music fonts with the symbols arranged in the same order and using the same codes. Each music software maker design its own fonts and decides how they are organized. Another important difference with alphabetical fonts is that music renderization programs need to have a detailed description of the metrics (sizes, certain gyph features position points, etc.) of the glyphs in order to be able to correctly position the lines (i.e. stems), other glyphs, etc. So you don’t have as many freedom to use music fonts as with word processors. And this is another reason to explain why each music software maker uses its own fonts.
To design a music font the most importan factors (in my very ammateur oppinion) are the font metrics: the glyphs must keep proportions to be used with a given staff lines distance; also, you must take into account that glyphs should render acceptable when using low zooming factors; for example, to display half music score page in a window; in these cases staff lines distance can be as small as four or five pixels and a notehead must render acceptable. Appart of this, you have all the freedom to design the font and allocate the glyphs at you own.
If you are interested in music fonts there is a webpage listing many different music fonts: http://www.music-notation.info/en/compmus/musicfonts.html
And all this bring me to my initial questions. My problem is that I have to design a music font to be used in my programs (You could visit my web site to see the software: www.lenmus.org) . Having to design a font is just an accident to me. I will, probably, never design another font. I wouldn’t like to spend too much time on this task. For the first attempt, just to start, I allocated the glyphs in alphabetical character codes positions and I didn’t care about other matters, as my main concern was with the music renderization algorithms.
Now, with all algorithmic issues more or less solved, I would like to redesing the font, add all the missing characters and do it as better as possible to avoid problems to port the software to other platforms: Is there something that I should take into account not to have problems when porting a font to other platform? (any, in general, not a music font)
Also I would like to avoid future compatibility problems: Should I use Open Type or True Type? Does it matters? What would you recommend me?
As I need a lot of symbols (more than 400), should I split the collection into several fonts or it would be better to have a single font with all symbols? How many glyphs can be allocated in a font? Is it easy to deal with so many symbols in a font?
Well, as you can see, I am an circumstancial font designer how knows nothing about font internals. That’s why I would appreciate very much any advice from more experience people.
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Cecilio