Re: Next step for easier custom music font switching

[Janek Warchoł]

Hi,

2014-07-20 16:43 GMT+02:00 Abraham Lee <address@hidden>:
>
> On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 3:47 AM, Janek Warchoł <address@hidden>
> wrote:
>> A thought: i'm missing the possibility to set the weight of the music font
>> used by LilyPond for a particular score. In other words: let's
>>
>> say i have an engraving with staff-size 16; Lilypond automatically uses
>> Feta16 for that. I'd like to be able to say "please use a heavier font
>> version" to make LilyPond use Feta14 font (scaled to staff-size 16). Or "use
>> a much lighter font" to make LilyPond use Feta20 (scaled down to staff-size
>> 16). To make it easier to implement such a feature, wouldn't it make more
>> sense to have all "optical versions" of the font in the same size? Right now
>> the font versions meant for smaller staff-sizes are "physically" smaller. I
>> think we could produced all versions in the same size, just with different
>> "weights". I think that's how it's done with text fonts - for example, a
>> font has a "display" version used for headings (at big sizes, 20+) and
>> "text" version used for block text (for sizes 10-16), but the actual
>> dimensions are the same. What do you think? best, Janek
>
>
> Yeah, that makes sense. That's exactly how Feta (Emmentaler) is designed.
> Each optical size has a different weight, where "heavier" ones are designed
> for smaller print sizes and "lighter" ones are designed for larger print
> sizes. In the font files, they are actually the same size.

Ah, that's nice!  I don't know why i was so sure that they aren't.

> The challenge here is how each of the glyphs get "heavier" or "lighter".
> This is a non-trivial design problem. I guess we could use FontForge's
> ability to uniformly change a font's weight, but I think this automagic
> change might not be what we really want (maybe it is). If you look at what
> changes the weights of the different optical text fonts, you'll find it's
> more than just making all the lines thicker (which is what FontForge does).
> Even Feta doesn't change like this through the different sizes. It changes
> more in some places than in others, preserving certain features and
> highlighting others. It's a complicated task. I really, REALLY like the idea
> of optical fonts, but I'm not sure if they should be required due to the
> design challenge associated with them.

Yes, this is a difficult task.  I don't think we should require every
font to have optical variants.

best,
Janek