The original version of this page can be found at : http://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=5&m=285390
| Posted By : Simon Rodwell - 3/11/2010 8:04 AM | | This is not strictly a Finale question but I know this forum gets partcipation from professional music engravers so here goes.
Can anyone recommend a Unicode font which includes an implementation of the music symbol set. At the university where I work we are trying to use music symbols within text paragraphs both for online and print use. We used to use a non-unicode font for much of our print work but the systems we now use require a unicode font to be used for both print and online.
The music symbols to which I refer are in the range 1D00 - 1D1FF in the Unicode 5.2 standard charts.
I'm no font or typographic expert but I hope there is someone out there who might be able to help me. The font must be a unicode one.
Many thanks
Simon Rodwell
Project Manager
The open University
UK
Finale 2009 user!!! |
| Posted By : Dr. Wiggy - 3/11/2010 9:12 AM | I had a discussion about Unicode musical characters on another forum. As far as I know, music fonts are divided into those used for notation, and those used for inserting music symbols into body text. Neither seems to use the Unicode music positions.
You may find a complete Unicode font that includes them, but I'd be surprised.
Why does the FONT need to be Unicode? I would have thought that the app and the OS would handle the encoding, and the font would be irrelevant. So, for example, I can use Type 1 fonts in a text document, and that text can be encoded as UTF-8, UTF-16, Windows, Mac OS Roman, ISO 2022 Japanese, or any other type of Unicode encoding.
If you do indeed need the a text font that includes musical characters in those glyph positions, then you may have to use a font editor to graft the symbols from your old font into the 1D00 - 1D1FF range of your Unicode text font.
PS. Have I seen your name on an OU forum..? But I've said too much...
Finale 2009c, 2Ghz iMac; 2Ghz MacBook, 10.6.1
Edirol FA-66; M-Audio Oxygen 61; Yamaha PSR-410
Ancient Groove Music
www.ancientgroove.co.uk |
| Posted By : Michael Good - 3/11/2010 4:49 PM | | Unicode Western musical symbols are incomplete, so they tend not to be used even for their intended purpose of inline text. But they may work if your musical examples are sufficiently straightforward.
I know someone was working on a Unicode Western Musical Symbols font many years ago, but I can't find the reference to it now. A Google search comes up pretty empty. You may need to do this yourself in a font editor.
For notation editing, I believe that Unicode-compatible music notation fonts put the font characters in the Unicode private use area (E000-F8FF).
Recordare LLC
Post Edited (Michael Good) : 3/11/2010 4:02:01 PM (GMT-6) |
| Posted By : DCrocker - 3/11/2010 7:42 PM | If anyone is interested, the Unicode chart for musical symbols can be found at http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1D100.pdf. It may be woefully inadequate for actual music engraving, but is apparently useful for something like a web page. (That presents interesting possibilities!)
According to Microsoft (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/287247), the Arial Unicode MS font "contains glyphs for all code points within the Unicode Standard, version 2.1." I couldn't find any music characters, sad to say.
I strongly suspect the skimpy resources for actual music notation in the Unicode standard may be one of the reasons why Finale has yet to adopt a Unicode-friendly approach to TEXT notation, which would make life so much simpler for some people...
Dean
Now playing around with 2010.
Seriously using FinWin 2006, 2007 or 2008 almost daily.
(Previously used everything back to version 2.0.1) |
| Posted By : Dr. Wiggy - 3/12/2010 4:39 AM | DCrocker said...
I strongly suspect the skimpy resources for actual music notation in the Unicode standard may be one of the reasons why Finale has yet to adopt a Unicode-friendly approach to TEXT notation, which would make life so much simpler for some people...
Not sure about that. Finale could use the same Maestro single-byte fonts that it does now, but still support Unicode. The fact that it maps the music symbols to "ASCII" glyphs, rather than using the Unicode 'approved' positions is irrelevant. I can currently use the Maestro font in several other apps that only support Unicode encoding.
The real problem for MakeMusic is that they would have to change every line of code that referred to fonts, to reflect the change from single-byte to double-byte. MM would probably also be forced to use newer text-handling APIs for both platforms than they currently do. Ensuring that all their data structures are aware of the change and handle it properly is a major rewrite -- and don't forget testing!
But I digress..... 
Finale 2009c, 2Ghz iMac; 2Ghz MacBook, 10.6.1
Edirol FA-66; M-Audio Oxygen 61; Yamaha PSR-410
Ancient Groove Music
www.ancientgroove.co.uk |
| Posted By : Michael Good - 3/12/2010 1:09 PM | |
Gerd Castan's wonderful site (www.music-notation.info) lists one Unicode Western Musical Symbols font, Euterpe, available at:
http://www.openfontlibrary.org/media/files/Eimai/191
The forum software seems to be mangling the URL, so you may need to cut and paste vs. clicking on the link.
This is different from the project I was thinking of before. I believe that project never actually got around to releasing a Unicode Western Musical Symbols font. So this may be the only choice currently available, for better or worse.
Western Musical Symbols were added to Unicode in version 3.1. One problem is that these characters are in the part of Unicode that cannot be represented by a single 16-bit value. A lot of older software assumed Unicode meant single 16 bit characters. Unicode 3.1 was the first version which actually broke this mistaken assumption in older software.
No engraving program would use the Unicode musical symbols for sheet music production. That's not its purpose - it's for inline text, as Simon wants to do.
Michael Good
Recordare LLC
Post Edited (Michael Good) : 3/12/2010 12:15:21 PM (GMT-6) |
| Posted By : DCrocker - 3/13/2010 12:44 PM | Oh, that is VERY nice!
dean
Now playing around with 2010.
Seriously using FinWin 2006, 2007 or 2008 almost daily.
(Previously used everything back to version 2.0.1) |
| Posted By : jange - 11/30/2016 5:14 AM | Reviving an old thread with new data...
Michael Good said...
No engraving program would use the Unicode musical symbols for sheet music production.
And I thought ... why not ?
It's not really possible to make Finale's document settings compatible with the unicode musical symbol area U+1d100,
so I have remapped some of them to match the Finale standard:
Euterpe, FreeSerif, Noto Sans Symbols, Unifont Upper, Symbola and Musica are now included in the free "Elbsound Music Font Package" v1.1.
Also Bravura is included which uses the unicode musical symbol area for symbol duplication.
AFAIK there are at least five more fonts that cover the designated unicode musical symbols area:
Quivira, November2, Code2001, Andron Mega Corpus Regular and Segoe UI Symbol (yes, Microsoft designed a music font!),
but only Quivira has a free license for font modifications and might be added to the font package later.
Attached is an example of the musical symbols from the free Google font "Noto Sans Symbols" rendered in Finale.
Unfortunately it's currently not possible to have a font fully Maestro-compatible AND to have access to the full unicode symbol area in Finale (Windows).
If you encode the font as a "Symbol" font (required for full compatibility with Maestro), Finale doesn't give access to the symbols above U+10000.
This can be seen for example in the commercial November2 font.
Jan
Elbsound.studioPost Edited (jange) : 11/30/2016 10:07:55 AM (GMT-6) |
| Posted By : Robert P. - 11/30/2016 7:41 AM | jange said...
Unfortunately it's currently not possible to have a font fully Maestro-compatible AND to have access to the full unicode symbol area in Finale.
If you encode the font as a "Symbol" font (required for full compatibility with Maestro), Finale doesn't give access to the symbols above U+10000.
This can be seen for example in the commercial November2 font.
Perhaps I did not quite get your point, but November 2, encoded as Unicode with special 'alternates' does the 3:
- Maestro-compatible (apart from some exceptions - but this was my choice because of the legacy November font)
- SMuFL unicode standard and user areas
- Unicode Music symbol area (so yes, above U+10000 !)
So for instance, the G clef is accessible (in the selection dialog box) as slot #38 ('Maestro' range), #284 (U+E050 in SMuFL range), and #1597 (U+1D11E in Music Symbols range)
Robert
2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, 8GB RAM
Mac OS X 10.8.4 / [Win 7/8 under WMWare] |
| Posted By : jange - 11/30/2016 7:53 AM | >So for instance, the G clef is accessible (in the selection dialog box) as slot #38 ('Maestro' range), #284 (U+E050 in SMuFL range), and #1597 (U+1D11E in Music Symbols range)
Hm, I haven't tried MacOS, but it isn't available at U+1D11E on Finale/Windows, neither 2014, 2014.5 nor v25.
I have seen no font that is encoded as "Symbol" font AND uses the slots 129-159 where the range above U+10000 is available in Finale (only in Finale of course, in other programs it is available in November2 and other fonts). Attached are screenshots of Finale 2014.5/Windows 10 of November2 and Aruvarb.
The slots are available in the symbol selection dialog, but the glyphs are not there (only the "standard" empty glyph is visible on all slots above U+10000).
The reason is probably that Finale uses the wrong cmap glyph subtable of the font: it uses a two-byte encoded table (up to U+FFFF), instead of the four-byte encoded.
I assume that Finale uses the subtable with Platform ID 0 and the Specific ID 3 (or Platform ID 3 with Specific ID 1?) which only includes links to the glyphs until FFFF.
It should have used the Specific ID 10 instead (=fourbyte encoded).
It is possible though to have access to U+10000, if the slots 129-159 are not used.
That's for example the case in Bravura.
Jan
Elbsound.studioPost Edited (jange) : 11/30/2016 7:28:17 AM (GMT-6) |
| Posted By : Dr. Wiggy - 11/30/2016 8:18 AM | jange said...
Reviving an old thread with new data...
In the words of the song, What a difference six years makes.... 
Finale v.25.1, 2012 MacMini; 2012 MacBook Pro (10.11.6 / 10.12.1)
Edirol FA-66; Roland A-49, HP Laserjet 5200 DTN
Ancient Groove Music www.ancientgroove.co.uk |
| Posted By : Robert P. - 11/30/2016 9:43 AM | >> Hm, I haven't tried MacOS
I see, the problem is Windows-only!
R.
2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, 8GB RAM
Mac OS X 10.8.4 / [Win 7/8 under WMWare] |
| Posted By : Derrek - 11/30/2016 11:57 AM | Presumably with Finale moving to 64-bit in version 25, font changes are now possible and likely at some point in the future considering MM's interest in SMuFL.
Finale 2014.5, Finale 25.1 - Windows 7 (64-bit)
GPO 5, JABB 3, World Instruments
TG Tools Full, (Sonar Platinum, Dorico)
“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.” — Groucho Marx
|
| Posted By : jange - 12/1/2016 6:11 AM | Yes, for full SMuFL and/or unicode compatibility MakeMusic still has to do a few bug fixes.
For example the shape designer dialog and the repeat dialog do not allow to select/enter unicode values above 255.
You can only "hack" them into Finale by using a plugin or import libraries.
Internally Finale can already handle unicode up to U+FFFF pretty good.
Jan
Elbsound.studio |
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