Re: Music glyph design choices

[tisimst]

On 8/10/2015 10:57 AM, Phil Holmes-2 [via Lilypond] wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "tisimst" <[hidden email] 
> </user/SendEmail.jtp?type=node&node=179439&i=0>>
> To: <[hidden email] </user/SendEmail.jtp?type=node&node=179439&i=1>>
> Sent: Monday, August 10, 2015 5:32 PM
> Subject: Re: Music glyph design choices
>
> > This is in way definitive, but seems like nice evidence for using
> > identical flats. I'd be very interested in seeing a score where they
> > were intentionally /not/ identical.
>
>
> Looks like this should form an enhancement/bug request.  Do you have the
> skills to fix the font files?

Yes and no. I don't feel super comfortable putting together an official 
.PATCH, but I can definitely post my proposed changes or send updated 
files to anyone who has more experience getting these officially in the 
assembly line. FWIW I took the liberty to play around with the code that 
creates the double flat glyph and here's what I have that we can talk 
about if anyone cares to chime in.

First, the double flat. In the following image, you'll see three glyphs 
in the right. From the top, we see the current glyph, with the left 
flat's width = 0.7 and the right flat's width = 0.8. Next down shows 
what would happen if we averaged the widths of the two flats, which 
keeps the overall width of the glyph the same as the current one. The 
bottom glyph is composed of exact copies of the flat glyph with an 
appropriate overlap, to me at least, based on real scores I've seen. The 
only "downside" I can see is that it becomes a _little_ wider than the 
other two. Personally, I think this is going to have a minimal spacing 
effect on most scores since its usage isn't nearly as common as the flat is.



Thankfully it's just a matter of setting these variables in the glyph's 
MF code (except for "width", which is calculated). The "crook" value is 
multiplied by "staff_space". The flatflat.slash glyph should probably be 
changed to be the same.

BTW, if it isn't obvious from the picture, the "overlap" variable is how 
much the left flat's right-most bound overlaps the right flat's origin 
(the blue line), so even overlap=0 will have some real overlap because 
the flat glyph's left-most bound isn't at x=0.

Second, changing the prallup and pralldown glyphs according to my 
previous suggestions would also quite easy, if that were agreed upon. 
This is done by simply changing the order of the glyphs in 
feta-trills.mf to be

prallprall
prallmordent
upprall
upmordent
prallup*
downprall
downmordent
pralldown*
lineprall

(* i.e., just swap the prallup and pralldown places) and adding 
"currentpicture := currentpicture yscaled -1;" at the end of both 
prallup and pralldown definitions, the thick and thin parts of the 
zig-zags are then consistent across all of them. I don't have any 
historical proof to back my proposals for these two glyphs. It just 
seems "right" to make them consistent with the rest of them.

Those are my thoughts. Any 
thoughts/questions/concerns/rebuttals/snide-remarks?

- Abraham


jagbhabg.png (175K) 
<http://lilypond.1069038.n5.nabble.com/attachment/179444/0/jagbhabg.png>




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