A SMuFL update to a handwritten style of music font.
The GoldenAge music notation font was written by Don Rice in the early 90s, and has been a very popular exemplar of the hardwritten style often found in Jazz and Pop sheets.
Don Rice has kindly allowed me to update the font to the SMuFL standard for Unicode music glyph layout. It remains a work in progress, but should be usable.
The original ("legacy") package contained four fonts: two music fonts "Music" and "Xtra"; and two text fonts "Title" and "Text". The characters of the two text fonts are stylistically identical, just with different bounding box heights; the Xtra music font contains a small number of alternative and additional symbols.
Because the SMuFL character range does not conflict with the standard text font characters, I have decided to merge all the characters, text and music, into one font. The text characters have been expanded, with extra diacritic-vowel combinations, and improved kerning.
The font is consequently given a different name (including PostScript name) from the legacy package. This allows the old fonts can continue to be used in old documents. Documents updated to the new font will need to be checked to ensure that nothing has moved!
The font uses glyphs to create boxes around text. There are left and right ends, and zero-width horizontal lines that can be interspersed between each character inside the box.
Complete Box:
| Character | Name | Unicode | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
∫ |
INTEGRAL | U+222B |
Left Edge of Complete Box |
∞ |
INFINITY | U+221E |
Top and Bottom of Complete Box (used between each character) |
∂ |
PARTIAL DIFF | U+2202 |
Right Edge of Complete Box |
Example: ∫C∞o∞m∞p∞l∞e∞t∞e∞ ∞B∞o∞x∞∂
Bottomless Box:
| Character | Name | Unicode | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
« |
LEFT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK | U+00AB |
Left Edge of Bottomless Box |
§ |
SECTION SIGN | U+00A7 |
Top of Bottomless Box (used between each character) |
» |
RIGHT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK | U+00BB |
Right Edge of Bottomless Box |
Example: «B§o§t§t§o§m§l§e§s§s§ §B§o§x»
Topless Box:
| Character | Name | Unicode | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
‹ |
SINGLE LEFT-POINTING ANGLE QUOTATION MARK | U+2039 |
Left Edge of Topless Box |
‡ |
DOUBLE DAGGER | U+2021 |
Bottom of Topless Box (used between each character) |
› |
SINGLE RIGHT-POINTING ANGLE QUOTATION MARK | U+203A |
Right Edge of Topless Box |
Example: ‹T‡o‡p‡l‡e‡s‡s‡ ‡B‡o‡x›
Install the font in the usual way. The JSON file must be added to the following location:
Windows: C:\Program Files\Common Files\SMuFL\Fonts\Golden Age\Golden Age.json
Mac: /Library/Application Support/SMuFL/Fonts/Golden Age/Golden Age.json
This font is © Don Rice, revised by Ben Byram-Wigfield, and released under the SIL Open Font Licence. See the accompanying OFL.txt file.