Re: Add option to indicate frets by letters in tablature (issue164063)

[David Kastrup]

address@hidden writes:

> 'c' marks fret 2 in French tab.
>
> Correct is to think of it as 'c', employ that concept internally, and in
> any documentation.  Draw it as a gamma-like glyph in fonts emulating those
> hands and fonts which do so historically; but encode it in those fonts as
> the 'c' it is.
>
> This list is the first place I have seen mention of the concept of it
> being a gamma, the citations i gave in an earlier email are the
> scholarly references for tablature notation, I own Apel and have it
> open now, but Wolf is hard to come by outside of a good music library.
> Apel takes time to discuss the development of some symbols, clefs for
> instance, but not these, no mention of gamma at all in his discussion
> of the symbols of french tabulature.  He illustrates Granjons pretty
> font in a 1568 publication, the 'c' in that font is a combination of
> both, the lower curve of a 'c', the upper flattened arm of a gamma.
> The hand of gaultier as seen in the Hamburg codex is also shown, there
> the 'c' (as labeled by Apel) is indeed a gamma, very rectilinear
> modern 'r'.  But, my point here is that Apel labels it 'c', and says
> nothing about it resembling a gamma.

Check out
<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Calligraphy.malmesbury.bible.arp.jpg>,
first letter in the next to last line.  "cognationum" starts with a "c".
You'll see where the confusion about blackletter "c" being either r or
gamma arises.

> The omission of j will be curious to anyone writing analytical
> software, but that is enough strangeness (gotta have at least one
> point of strangeness).

The Latin script does not have "j", "u" or "w" IIRC.

-- 
David Kastrup