Re: [abcusers] Fonts.
On Fri 01 Mar 2002 at 04:41PM -0600, Christian Cepel wrote: > > Greetings all. Software development project question here. > > Anyone have the skinny on available fonts and licensing issues involved in > distributing those fonts? If there's a plethora, do you have a favorite, > and why is it your favorite. > I've had a look into the font issue in the past and there are a fair selection of free fonts available, including scalable ones. The Freetype project might be a good place to start. This gives you a set of characters. However, to do music you need to be able to draw notes beamed together and slurs, which are pretty difficult with only a fixed font set. James Allwright To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Fonts.
Jack Campin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I think it would be better to adopt one font for the symbols (music > encoded in ABC doesn't need a great number of them) and let users > assign other fonts to specific roles in the score themselves (title > font, composer font, text annotation font...). A user who is trying > to embed scores generated by your software into other documents, or > match an existing "house style" for publication, will need the ability > to control these. Definitely. > If you must make a choice or set a default... > > My favourite variable-width serif text font is Palatino. I arrived at > that choice by experiment: my vision is not particularly good, has been > deteriorating for years, and this was during a bad patch. I printed a > pageful of the same text at the same size in every font I could find, > seeing which one was readable from the greatest distance. Palatino > won by a big margin, with Computer Modern far at the bottom by an even > bigger one. I rather like Palatino too. The problem with Computer Modern is that to look good it requires printing at a really high resolution (Knuth's books are typeset on a phototypesetter that does something like 4333dpi, and the 600dpi that current laser printers can manage are definitely not enough), so while it is in many ways a very good design the output devices that the likes of us are likely to have around won't really be able to do it proper justice. There is a free Palatino lookalike available with Ghostscript. > I haven't done the same experiment as thoroughly with other kinds of > font, but get the impression Gill Sans would beat any other sans-serif > proportional font at the same test. I generally use Courier for fixed- > width but I'm sure there must be something better out there. Gill Sans is another one that I like. If you go with Palatino a good sans-serif font to use with it is Optima, also by Hermann Zapf (but I don't think a free version is available anywhere). You can get a CD-ROM from Bitstream that has something like 500 fonts at a very reasonable price; the fonts are not great but they are certainly more workable than the usual »1000 FREE FONTS« offerings that you get from jumble sales, and that includes fairly nice versions of Palatino, Gill Sans and Optima. For fixed width, Courier is about as bad a font as there can conceivably be. Knuth's Computer Modern Typewriter is not at all bad (and it even comes in a sane encoding, compared to the rest of CM). Recent distributions of X11 contain a mostly-free set of fonts by B&H called »Lucidux« which includes a rather nice monospaced variety. Anselm -- Anselm Lingnau .. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Host: What a parasite lives in or on. Your programs have this relationship to the computer. -- Larry Wall & Randal Schwartz, *Programming Perl* To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Fonts.
>Anyone have the skinny on available fonts and licensing issues involved in
>distributing those fonts? If there's a plethora, do you have a favorite,
>and why is it your favorite.
>
>I guess more importantly, since I assume most of the fonts are a 'lookup
>assignment table' type system, if possible, we'd like to use a font that
>a) gives a good clean overall screen and print appearance especially when
>a user resizes layout, b) contains tons of symbols to satisfy any musical
>whim, c) is available and somewhat similar in font-metrics across
>platforms { mac, pc, X }
TeX is cross-platform, sort of, and has all the symbols you want. You
can also get its fonts in TrueType and PostScript versions, and I *think*
you can get most of what you want for free, at least if you're prepared
to do some conversion work. Have a rummage round a TeX archive site.
Your problems are (a) TeX has an idiosyncratic scheme for accessing
fonts which no other application can make use of, and (b) the standard
TeX text font, Computer Modern, is an etiolated abortion that nobody
in their right mind would want to use if they weren't stuck with TeX
and which appears to be the result of a conspiracy by headache-pill
manufacturers.
I think it would be better to adopt one font for the symbols (music
encoded in ABC doesn't need a great number of them) and let users
assign other fonts to specific roles in the score themselves (title
font, composer font, text annotation font...). A user who is trying
to embed scores generated by your software into other documents, or
match an existing "house style" for publication, will need the ability
to control these.
If you must make a choice or set a default...
My favourite variable-width serif text font is Palatino. I arrived at
that choice by experiment: my vision is not particularly good, has been
deteriorating for years, and this was during a bad patch. I printed a
pageful of the same text at the same size in every font I could find,
seeing which one was readable from the greatest distance. Palatino
won by a big margin, with Computer Modern far at the bottom by an even
bigger one. Bodoni, Garamond and Caslon would probably rate pretty
well too, I couldn't test them at the time.
I haven't done the same experiment as thoroughly with other kinds of
font, but get the impression Gill Sans would beat any other sans-serif
proportional font at the same test. I generally use Courier for fixed-
width but I'm sure there must be something better out there.
===
[abcusers] Fonts.
Greetings all. Software development project question here.
Anyone have the skinny on available fonts and licensing issues involved in
distributing those fonts? If there's a plethora, do you have a favorite,
and why is it your favorite.
I guess more importantly, since I assume most of the fonts are a 'lookup
assignment table' type system, if possible, we'd like to use a font that
a) gives a good clean overall screen and print appearance especially when
a user resizes layout, b) contains tons of symbols to satisfy any musical
whim, c) is available and somewhat similar in font-metrics across
platforms { mac, pc, X }
I guess I must be honest, that I've never looked closely at any of the
fonts distributed with my various music software packages. I'm sure
Finale's Maestro must be among the more actively developed available, but
it's probably among the more expensive to license, if indeed they license
it for use at all.
Trying not to reinvent the wheel here, so if anyone knows this info that
could help us get a jumpstart on development, we'd be greatful.
Thanks!
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