Drawing Grace Notes?
DavidMWebber opened this issue · 2 comments
Is there a more precise recommendation for drawing grace notes?
Sect 4.46 of the spec (U-E560-U-E56F) recommends not using the precomposed glyphs, and indeed precomposed glyphs are only available there with a single flag.
That section does give the component for a stroke though the acciaccatura stem, but I want to draw an appoggiatura with two flags. The flags (Sect 4.17 U+E240-U+E25F) include small versions as 'stylistic alternates' but these are described as being for a 'small staff' (for cue notes?) rather than for grace notes. Are grace note flags included anywhere - preferably not as stylistic alternates?
And note heads for grace notes? Again the nearest I can find are stylistic alternates described for a 'small staff' - so again I'd assume these to be cue notes.
Any help gratefully received.
Dave
Let me elaborate on this a bit. My software "Mozart" (https://www.mozart.co.uk) has its own music fonts. These long predate the SMuFL project, but for a new version, I've gradually been bring them into compliance, as best I can, with SMuFL - starting with the code points. In doing so I've found lots of things which have had to go into the 'optional characters' area. For many, it's arguable whether they have to be in the music font, but for historical reasons they're in mine. No real problem there. But the area of greatest discrepancy is grace notes. Unless I just haven't found them, it appears that the components necessary for drawing these, other than with the precomposed glyphs, and without creating a second instance of the font at 'grace note size', are absent. The 16 grace note glyphs from my font which I've had to put in the optional characters area are:
grace note heads (black, half, whole);
grace note flags (8th, 16th, 32nd, 64th; up and down);
grace note accidentals (double sharp, sharp, natural, flat, double flat).
It would be really nice if these had their proper code points in the SMuFL system.
In general we have not chosen to provide dedicated code points for glyphs that differ from existing glyphs only by way of relative size. The assumption is that all of these components for grace notes should be drawn using the same symbols as for normal-sized notes, particularly since many scoring applications allow the user to change the scale factor used for grace notes, which would make encoding these glyphs at a specific fixed size of limited utility.
I think if it were to make sense to include glyphs specifically for use in drawing grace notes, it would be to recommend the creation of a stylistic set specifically for items drawn at grace note size, and to include such glyphs in there.