Op maandag 19-10-2009 om 15:05 uur [tijdzone +0100], schreef Simon Tatham: > (I hope this reply to the list works.
I think not, you'll have to subscribe. > I had to post my previous > message through the Gmane interface, but if I have to post this one > the same way, I won't be able to get the In-Reply-To header to work > properly.) > Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke-l...@xs4all.nl> wrote: > > > Wow. You created a full font? That must have taken quite some time! > > I think Feta took Han-Wen and me something between one and two > > man-years of work. > > This one has only taken me a couple of months (including some > initial thought about how to get nice-looking curves without an > excessive amount of manual specification). But then, it's very > likely that a lot of yours is better thought out in many ways that I > didn't pay much attention to. (Just for a start, I haven't > implemented your subtle variation between the different point sizes, > except in the braces.) > > > I feel a bit disappointed because one of my goals was to create a font > > that would look like the most beautiful music that I have seen. As > > one of our explicit goals for LilyPond is for the printed music /not/ > > to distract the player, we evidently failed to achieve this for you. > > I'm afraid so, but then, it doesn't seem surprising to me that one > answer doesn't satisfy everybody's tastes! I don't think you have > any call to feel disappointed at not having managed to please > absolutely everybody. > > > Looking at Gonville it's not so difficult to imagine for me how this > > could be, as I cannot remember ever having seen music that looks much > > like it. For example, the up-flags are much fatter and > > rounder/shorter than the down flags, is that intentional? > > I may yet make another attempt at redesigning the multiple flags. > The intention was to have them all essentially similar in shape > (unlike, say, Feta's quadruple down-flag in which the four flags > look very different from each other) and bold enough to make it easy > to see how many of them there were. They're all currently 'the same > thickness' in the sense that every flag covers the same vertical > length of stem where it joins on to it; that's something that I may > re-think later on in favour of a more subjective idea of 'sameness', > because I've already had one mild criticism of it. > > > What is the status of the font, is it ready for general use, is it > > finished? > > Initial development is complete. I may make changes, but probably > not until I've collected some feedback and got a general idea of > what really does want changing and what's a silly idea I've > accidentally talked myself into by thinking too hard about it... > > > Up till now we have been advertising Feta as being "the" lilypond font > > and describing it mostly with general terms as "beautiful" and > > "designed after the best typesetting traditions". In some places, > > possibly the essay and talks, we elaborated on the fatness, eg see the > > short note of font design at > > > > http://lilypond.org/web/about/automated-engraving/typography-features > > One comment from a friend about the difference between the two fonts > was that a thing he liked about Gonville was that it looked more > modern. Feta certainly seems to be striving after a 'traditional' > look, and perhaps that's precisely what is not to everyone's taste > (one person's 'traditional' is another's 'old-fashioned' :-). > > > Now that you created a second working font for Lily, it would be > > nice if both fonts were [more explicitly] advertised as to what > > they were designed after. The LilyPond font sources contain > > quite a few citings of sources of inspiration, eg [...] > > Sadly I don't have anything like that sort of detailed citation > available. I grew up playing the violin, and in designing Gonville I > was trying to recall the look of the sheet music I was provided with > by my teachers, because that was what I was used to reading; > unfortunately, I don't have most of that sheet music any more, so > all I can give is vague generalities. > > Ultimately, my design criterion was that it should satisfy my > personal subjective aesthetic criteria. Feedback so far suggests > that at least a few other people's criteria are not too far off > mine, but I don't think I could really give a scholarly analysis of > where mine came from. > > > Further, common [text-]font considerations were taken into > > account. For example, a glyph should look balanced out. It > > should not lean backward of forward, inviting the reader to catch > > it before it falls over :-) > > It's interesting that you should mention that: that actually reminds > me of one of my specific issues with Feta, namely that the curved > centre line of its treble clef _does_ make it look to me as if it's > leaning over backwards. Gonville's straight-backed version feels > much more balanced to me. > > > Do you intend to have Gonville included in LilyPond? > > You'd be welcome to include it if you wanted to, but I hadn't > particularly expected that you would - I was under no illusions that > you'd instantly prefer it to the font you've carefully tuned to the > criteria you consider important! I'm perfectly happy to maintain it > as a third-party accessory, and keep it up to date as necessary. I > don't even ask for a link from the website, if you don't think > Gonville is of sufficiently high quality to merit it. > > All I'd suggest is trivial changes to Lilypond to make it easy to > use an alternative font, and at least not actually _deny_ that such > a thing exists. (E.g. the documentation for ly:system-font-load > currently says that only Emmentaler and Aybabtu contain the > necessary LILC, LILF and LILY tables, which is now out of date :-) > > Oh, and there was one other thing: Gonville's time signature digits > are deliberately designed to stay clear of the 1st, 3rd and 5th > stave lines, because I find that makes the numbers much more > legible. However, Lilypond insisted on squashing both sets of digits > firmly up against the middle line, defeating my intention. I've > worked around that for the moment by lying about the digits' > vertical extent, but that's a nasty hack; it would be nicer if > Lilypond itself could centre the digits around the 2nd and 4th lines > of the stave in the case where they're smaller than 2*staff_spacing > (which I think would also look nicer in the case where a user > manually selects a small alternative font for the digits). Would a > patch implementing that (which shouldn't change the current > behaviour for anyone using Feta) be likely to be accepted? > > > What bothers me a bit is the lightness of the font. I consider this > > to be an error frequently made by most post-manual/engraver [read: > > computer/programmer] produced music. > > Hmm. It probably wouldn't be too difficult for me to redo the whole > thing with increased line thickness; probably not as easy as it > would be for Feta (my metafont-like setup is less highly developed, > which is only to be expected given how much more time you've > spent!), but doable. I could try it and see how it looks. > > > I think the glyph lookup and handling code is already parametrized. > > Indeed, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get a font > with different metrics to work at all. Lilypond's strategy of > storing in the font file itself the information about where to > attach stems to the note heads, for example, was extremely useful; > without it I would probably have had to distribute Gonville in a > form that included a source code patch to Lilypond. Instead I was > able to use the unmodified Lilypond binary, and all I had to change > was the fonts subdirectory of $LILYPOND_DATADIR. > > The only problem was that I couldn't find any easier way to change > the font throughout than by using an alternative $LILYPOND_DATADIR. > I don't think I managed to get ly:system-font-load to even load a > font at all from outside the data directory, and even if I had, it > wouldn't have been at all clear (if possible at all) how to get > Lilypond to default to taking _all_ its glyphs from that font > instead of Feta. Perhaps I could have reconfigured them all one by > one, but that would need a lot of fiddly Scheme that was different > for every release... > > Cheers, > Simon _______________________________________________ lilypond-devel mailing list lilypond-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-devel
