Music fonts (and spacing)

Question

Level 1

13 points

Music fonts (and spacing)

Hi all,

I've searched many music and computer music forums and can't find a music font that is designed for (or at least, will work correctly) with text documents. I do a lot of writing about music, and am looking for a better solution than using the pound sign and lower case B when referring to, e.g., C# and Eb.

There are plenty of music fonts, but it seems they are all designed for the particular notation program: Sibelius, Finale, Lime, Logic, etc. When I use them in line, that is, a sentence in Times then switch fonts for one character, it screws up the spacing, making the line take up more space. Even if I decrease the font size or superscript them, they take up too much space.

Here is an example:
http://fileserver.music.utah.edu/~dcottle/Music/Musicintext.png

In reverse order of importance:

1) How can I fix this with the fonts I'm using? I know how to set the exact spacing in Word, but am new to Pages.

2) Forcing the spacing is a kluge. I really should be using fonts that are spaced correctly. Where can I find a font with graceful, engraved music characters but intended to be used as text?

3) Why does it do that? The sharp and flats I use are the same size as the other characters in the regular font. Why do music fonts take so much space?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Posted on Aug 29, 2009 11:38 AM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,082 points

Aug 29, 2009 12:11 PM in response to David Cottle

can't find a music font that is designed for (or at least, will work correctly) with text documents.

Open Character Palette, View = Code Tables, Tab = Unicode and go to 00002600. Scroll down to 266D and 266F, and you should see in the font variation pane the normal text fonts that have these (♯♭) Perhaps one will work right. If not, we can perhaps suggest others.

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Answer 2

Badunit

Level 7

30,384 points

Aug 29, 2009 6:24 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

The Arial Unicode ♭ and ♯ and ♮ are available from the character palette in 10.5.8 and Arial Unicode MS is an available font in the list of fonts in Pages. You can find these characters in the Font Variations part of the character palette, along with many others font variations of them which you may or may not like better. Add them to your favorites so you don't have to search for them again. I tried them out and they do not affect the line spacing if all the text is the same font. It does affect line spacing if the text is one font but the symbols are a different font. So once you've found a font variation you like for your symbols, see if you like it for your text. When you're happy with both, you should be ready to rock (or whatever).

Message was edited by: Badunit

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Answer 3

Aug 29, 2009 11:53 AM in response to David Cottle

First of all, the Library of the University of Virginia proposed a decade ago to the International Standards Organisation that western musical symbols be assigned code points in ISO-IEC 10646 Universal Character Set. The Library is also the platform of the XML-based Music Encoding Initiative, a parallel to the XML-based Text Encoding Initiative. You can access western musical symbols in Apple Mac OS X through the Apple Character Palette which is the interface to the universal character set. The system will show the character codes using the Last Resort Font, if you do not have an intelligent font file installed in whose CMAP Character Map the western musical symbols are defined as imageable by the font. In addition to support in the universal character set and support in intelligent files, you also need line layout support that will work with the layout logic in intelligent font tiles.

/hh

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Answer 4

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,819 points

Aug 29, 2009 12:22 PM in response to David Cottle

In practice, for such specialized fonts, the given size doesn't match the true size, it's just a symbol allowing you to select a smaller or a greater one.
In the given sample, you may play with the baseline setting.

You may find a lot of fonts from these links.

http://simplythebest.net/fonts/fonts/musical_symbols.html

http://www.music-notation.info/en/compmus/musicfonts.html

I found one which seems interesting:
ttf-oflb-euterpe 1.1-1all.deb
but at this time I got only a Debian package and I don't know how to use it 😟

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) samedi 29 août 2009 21:22:23

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Answer 5

David Cottle Author

Level 1

13 points

Aug 29, 2009 12:30 PM in response to Henrik Holmegaard

Thanks for the quick replies.

Henrick: This is very interesting (and you obviously know what you're talking about) but not very helpful. I'm not a font person so I have no idea what a Last Resort Font, intelligent font file, Character Map, imgageable, or line layout support is and more importantly how they relate to my questions. It sounds like you're telling me how to design a font. That's beyond my scope.

Tom: Of course the first place I looked was the Special Characters/Character Pallette (I should have said so). Aside from the annoying glitch that every time I open the special characters it makes the input menu appear (which I don't want and have to go back to system preferences to turn off), it's not a good solution. There is indeed a sharp, flat, and natural, listed under Music but these were not designed by a musician and look more like cartoon music, worse than the # and b that I now use. (Musicians, especially those in academe are required by law to be picky.)

So let me reiterate, or reword my questions:

I have three or four music fonts that look "engraved." For this question let's use Opus. It's pretty common.

1) If I want to use Opus, how do I get the spacing correct in Pages?

2) Has anyone out there found a music font that was intended for text? Such that I can switch back and forth as I would between Times and Courier?

3) (Just for my own curiosity.) Why (though I suspect Henrick answered this and it's just over my head) do the music fonts I have do this? Or dare I say, why do they look so great in their intended program, but not in Pages? Are they just poorly designed?

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Answer 6

David Cottle Author

Level 1

13 points

Aug 29, 2009 3:20 PM in response to David Cottle

Ok, I did a little fiddling, and first, all the links I followed (granted, not exhaustive, which is why I started this thread--I'm waiting for that one guy who has had this problem, knows the answer and can send me there) showed a great variety of fonts, but _designed for music programs_ such as Finale, Sibelius, etc.

I tried the baseline, but while it did lower the character itself, it had no effect on the amount of vertical space the character used.

Isn't there a setting in Pages that will force the height of the line? I can't find it.

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Answer 7

David Cottle Author

Level 1

13 points

Aug 29, 2009 4:23 PM in response to PeterBreis0807

You would think, and I tried that, but it changes the spacing of the entire paragraph. And even then the line with the sharp character is still proportionally larger than the others. In Word it is in the Paragraph Format dialog. For "line spacing" you can choose "At Least" or "Exactly." Setting it to "Exactly" 16 pts works nicely.

But still, the real solution is a font that is intended for text.

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Answer 8

David Cottle Author

Level 1

13 points

Aug 29, 2009 5:43 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Really!?! It's as if they were reading my mind, or I'm reading theirs, or something. The top one looks better.

We're planning to update, but they are cautious, and sometimes wait and watch for issues with a new system. But maybe I'll get them to just do my machine as a test.

Could you paste an example with these characters interlaced with text? For example, a paragraph where the middle lines use C# and Eb?

BTW: where are the instructions for including images in one of these posts? I need to learn how to do it.

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Answer 9

David Cottle Author

Level 1

13 points

Aug 29, 2009 8:50 PM in response to Badunit

BINGO!

+Font variation+ was the key. When I first tried the character palette, I just clicked on the default character in the main window, which, as I said above, looks like a cartoon sharp; what you might use in a speech bubble above a cartoon boy advertising a school play next to a "la la la." But once I got into the variations I found two that look quite nice. One was in Apple Symbols:

!http://fileserver.music.utah.edu/~dcottle/Music/Music in_textbingo.png!

I have to say, I miss the old OS 9 Keycaps, where you could click on a little icon and see all the characters in a font. I guess I just need to learn the character palette better.

I've been trying to solve this problem for years.

That was my big issue. But if anyone has answers to further questions:

1) I've searched high and low for a little app that would show all the characters in a given font, like keycaps. All the "font" apps seem to just show a sampling so you can see what the alphabet looks like. I want a map showing every character. Neither KeyboardViewer nor character palette do it. At least I can't see where. Plus, keyboardviewer has a very short list of fonts. And I don't see such an option in character palette. It's organized by symbol, not font. (But I couldn't figure out the "variations", so maybe I'm just not seeing it.)

2) Why are most music fonts so poorly designed for text? (Just curious.)

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Answer 10

David Cottle Author

Level 1

13 points

Aug 29, 2009 9:31 PM in response to Badunit

The last piece to the puzzle. How to make it less cumbersome. I will often type a sentence like: the chord Ab, Cb, Eb, Gb can be respelled with an F#, resolving to a G(natural), taking us from Ab to C(natural) by way of the Ab to F# augmented sixth. With the current solution I have to open the character palette and click on the symbol ten times for just one sentence.

The solution: Use Quickeys and create "clip" abbreviations so that "##" will be replaced with an Apple Symbol sharp.

Voila!

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Answer 11

David Cottle Author

Level 1

13 points

Aug 29, 2009 10:18 PM in response to Badunit

I considered that, and thought of copy and replace, but of course, font is the key. I don't like Apple Symbols for the rest of my text font, so I have to switch. So now I've been trying to find a font that is tolerable with text but also has a nice looking sharp. Arial Unicode (as suggested previously) is pretty good.

So now maybe you can answer this: where do I learn the key combination so I can just type it in as I would, say, an accent grave? KeyboardViewer is supposed to help you find the key mappings, but Arial isn't listed, and I don't think it would show the sharp character. I've been playing with FontBook, and it's kind of useful, but none of them show the key combination I would use to type the sharp. Seems like that would be faster. Maybe there isn't one?

But auto correction is a reasonable method. The problem with that is the accidental nearly always follows letter. So I would have to either type E bb and autocorrect the bb, then delete the space, or enter every possible combination: Eb, Ab, Bb, and auto correct them all. A bit cumbersome.

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Answer 12

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,819 points

Aug 30, 2009 1:09 AM in response to David Cottle

The shortcuts are the same for every standard font.
They are linked to the system language.
I will not list them because I know the French ones, not the English ones.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 30 août 2009 10:09:18

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Answer 13

Aug 30, 2009 1:42 AM in response to David Cottle

I'm not a font person so I have no idea what a Last Resort Font, intelligent font file, Character Map, imgageable, or line layout support is and more importantly how they relate to my questions. It sounds like you're telling me how to design a font. That's beyond my scope ... Or dare I say, why do they look so great in their intended program, but not in Pages?

Not quite. You are being told how music is supported in the universal character set, and how the universal character set is supported in the system level service for mapping font-independent character codes to font-dependent glyph codes that draw glyphs on digital graphic devices.

Traditionally, music and mathematics were not multiplied using the composite letterpress printing surface, but using the engraved copper plate printing surface and increasingly through the nineteenth and twentieth century using the lithographic printing surface.

After the introduction of digital imaging devices in the nineteen-eighties, music and mathetics, like oriental writing systems including Arabic and Indic, still did not fall in the scope of the applications for composing periodicals and books in the writing systems of the Latin script.

This has produced a problem. First and foremost, the thing to avoid is to do as Dr John Warnock and CEO Steven Jobs did in order to support mathematics (including monotonic Greek) in Adobe PostScript version 23 for the Apple LaserWriter.

What they did was to draw mathematics by directly depicting the mathematical glyphs onto character codes in Apple Standard Roman. This completely chaotifies the underlying textual content, even if the typographic composition as such can be correct.

For instance, here in København we have Det Kongelige Konservatorium where a lecturer sells TrueType and PostScript Type 1 fonts at DKK 200 or thereabouts to draw music the way mathematics was drawn in the Apple LaserWriter.

This is one part of what the Library of the University of Virginia is hoping to help people not do, because a digital document that starts its life cycle with chaotified textual content does not support computerised full phrase cataloguing.

The other part of what the Library of the University of Virginia wants to help people do is work with a layout logic for music that is independent of the life cycle of particular commercial products. This is along the same lines as other projects that propose a shift from application-dependent methods and models to application-independent methods and models. This raises the problem of application support which is part of the problem you report.

IMHO you should be able to find a non-alphabetic music font somewhere that supports music in ISO-IEC 10646 and that is workable when mixed with alphabetic fonts in the line, but to lay out sheet music you would want as well a font for a music layout format as a software shaper for that music layout format. You would also want an application-independent file format that preserves searching for the music and for the lyrics. PDF is dicey on support for search.

/hh

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Answer 14

Aug 30, 2009 1:43 AM in response to Henrik Holmegaard

Links to the Music Encoding Iniative postings and projects :

Perry Roland: Request for comments on Music Character Proposal, 19 September 1997
http://unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/Archives-Old/UML009/0698.html

Perry Roland: Proposal for Encoding Western Music Symbols in ISO-IEC 10646, 19 February 1998
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/artsandmedia/dmmc/Music/UnicodeMusic/

Perry Roland, Music Encoding Iniative, Library of the University of Virginia
http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/innovation/mei/

/hh

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Answer 15

Aug 30, 2009 1:53 AM in response to David Cottle

I have to say, I miss the old OS 9 Keycaps, where you could click on a little icon and see all the characters in a font. I guess I just need to learn the character palette better.

Apple Key Caps was developed by Steven Capps in 1983. It is a glyph picker and not a character picker which is to say that it will let you pick a glyph at the composing level even if picking that glyph at the composing level chaotifies computerised communication and computerised cataloguing.

Apple Character Palette has the fatal defect that it lets you do what Apple Key Caps did if you are trying to use Apple Character Palette for advanced typography, but at least its a step in the right direction.

/hh

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