Re: SMuFL

[Werner LEMBERG]

>> Unicode is a *character* standard, mainly to *exchange*
>> information.  It is *not* related to glyphs, or to fonts.  The
>> SMuFL team correctly maps the glyphs to the Private Area of
>> Unicode, and they don't suggest the inclusion of any of those
>> entities into the Unicode standard.
> 
> The distinction I'm seeing is that the Unicode Standard and SMuFL
> are two layers of standardization. What I see is that Unicode tells
> us what the glyphs mean, (so that we use the same code point in the
> font to refer to the same thing).  SMuFL, on the other hand, tells
> us how to draw and scale those glyphs so that they can be handled
> the same way regardless of the actual font.

Well, yes.  It's hard to change to a different font if such basic
assumptions aren't met.

> The concern I have on SMuFL is that it is an as-of-yet immature
> standard without broad support outside of Steinberg.  If we start
> working on SMuFL specifically, will the SMuFL standard look the same
> when we get done as it does now?  Will it be a futile effort because
> the SMuFL standard dies from lack of interest/acceptance?

Unicode essentially had the same problem in the very beginning.  After
a few years, it was clear that it was superior to everything else, and
many more companies and organizations started to support it.  SMuFL
will evolve, certainly.  It's tagged as 0.x, so we have to *expect*
that it will change.  Supporting SMuFL right now is futile, of course,
but the main question is whether we are going to make Lilypond support
SMuFL in general, for example, by providing a script and/or data
tables to convert an SMuFL font into a Lilypond font.  And in case
some glyphs are missing, we should now ask them to include such
glyphs.


    Werner