Re: GSoC 2020: blot diameter and positioning of flags

[Carl Sorensen]

On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 2:57 PM Owen Lamb <owendlamb@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 10:57 PM Werner LEMBERG <wl@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> >
> > Well, LilyPond's solution is more versatile...
> >
>
> I agree, to a point. It's more versatile for the user, but not necessarily
> for the font designer. At any rate, it's not exactly something we can
> overturn when the specification has already been around for a few years.
>

Owen,

I really appreciate all the work that you have done.  It's really been
amazing to see you work at it.

I am a bit concerned that we are talking about eliminating some of what I
think are superior design decisions of LilyPond in order to be SMuFL
compliant.  I prefer the convention of attaching the flag to the center of
the stem as opposed to the left-hand side.  I much prefer the rounded
corners on all Lilypond elements.  I think that if we have to give those up
to become SMuFL-compliant, we should maybe not become SMuFL-compliant.

Is it possible that we can maintain code for working with both SMuFL fonts
and LilyPond fonts, each with its own specification type?  It seems like
the extra information could be added to Emmentaler to make it SMuFL
compliant, but it could also be used as-is under the LilyPond font
specification.

I don't know if this is possible.  I don't even know if it's desirable.
But every time I see you say "if we want to do it the LilyPond way, we need
to get a change in the SMuFL spec", my concern with going full-SMuFL grows.

I believe the design decisions that Jan and Han-Wen made when creating
LilyPond are excellent, and that 20 years of development, I've seen nothing
that suggests we should move away from them.

How much would it derail your project to adjust it to add SMuFL-compliance
instead of replacing LilyPond with SMuFL?

Thanks,

Carl

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