Re: Accidentals' font

[Paolo Prete]

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 8:46 PM Carl Sorensen <carl.d.sorensen@gmail.com>
wrote:


>
>
>> All the fonts on the earth have many issues. If you look at the score of
>> Debussy, it has *many* and *many* issues, and it was one of the best
>> engraving techniques at his time.
>>
>
> Again, in your opinion it had *many* and *many* issues.
>
>


perhaps we give two different meanings and weights to the word "issue".
Note that I have said that Debussy's edition was excellent in those days.
And the engraving company (Durand) one of the most important in history.
Don't give the word "issue" a negative meaning. I think that in this type
of task, "issue" is the most neutral thing in the world. That said, you say
that I should write "in my opinion".
But look at the first six bars of the prelude:

https://github.com/paolo-prete/Spontini/blob/master/examples/debussy-frag-1.jpeg

Is the dangling 1/4 rest at bar 4 an "issue" in my (Paolo) opinion or is it
an "issue" tout-court?
And what about the end of the slur of bar 2 at the beginning of bar 3?
And what about the triple hairpin on two notes in bar 3?
And what about the beam that overlaps the stem at bar 6?



> I appreciate your interest in LilyPond.  And I appreciate your willingness
> to develop a self-contained html editor to allow easy creation of visual
> tweaks, which are then captured in the source.  I know that you use that,
> and I expect others will use it as well.  Thank you for your contribution.
>
> I am, however, getting somewhat weary of your posts that say, in essence,
> "LilyPond does X incorrectly.  And it is obvious to anybody that only an
> idiot would do it that way, so LilyPond needs to change."
>
> I realize that my paragraph above is hyperbole, not literal.  And yet,
> that is the feeling I get when I read many of your posts.  The tenor of
> your message makes it difficult for me to appreciate the value of your
> observations.  For example, in the particular case of this request, it
> might be reasonable to ship a "gonville-install" script with LilyPond that
> could be run to download and install Gonville (I'm not sure what all the
> technical challenges of this are).  And it might be reasonable to have the
> gonville-install script set the default font for LilyPond to be Gonville
> (again, I don't know what all the technical challenges of this approach
> are).  But because the justification for wanting Gonville is not expressed
> as a preference, but instead as a defect in Feta (which should apparently
> be obvious to everybody), I just tune it out.
>
> Again, I sincerely thank you for your contributions to LilyPond.
>
>
I think there is an incomprehension in the meaning of my words.
Unfortunately this does not depend on Lilypond but on commercial logic in
the production of musical fonts today. Today it seems to me that music
software producers are more interested in the captivating aspect of fonts
than in their actual readability. This is normal, otherwise they could not
sell their products. Consequently, this is why there is a great
proliferation of bold fonts of the "plate engraving" type. If you look at
the trill glyph in Gonville, it appears much simpler than those that are
commonly used. Commercially I think it would have little success. But
Gonville's trill glyph does not aim to be captivating; it aims to be more
readable.
Lilypond currently has two possibilities:

1) use the Feta font (---> "plate engraving approach") as do the other
notation softwares.

2) use the Gonville font (---> "readability / playability approach")

The two aspects are complementary and I have hardly seen such an accurate
and meticulously made font as Gonville, in the sense of readability /
playability. This would certainly give, in my opinion, a strong
professional touch to the software.

And I also want to thank you, of course, for your contribution to Lilypond.
This is beyond doubt. Thanks to Lilypond I am free from the slavery of the
WYSIWYG. I really can't think of using better alternative software than it.