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Topic: Lyric Fonts (Read 6763 times) previous topic - next topic

Lyric Fonts

Will version 2 have a selectable font for each lyric line? I would like to use different fonts for each lyric line, for example, regular characters on the first line, italic characters on the second line, Greek characters on the third line, etc.

Also, will the lyric tool have true unicode capability?

Re: Lyric Fonts

Reply #1 –
This was discussed during private beta test. A number of user would like that feature, including myself. There are work-around, even with NWC1: Lyrics can be placed as "text" and attched to notes. But this is tedious for a large piece.

In the Scriptorium is a font I created, that has both Roman and italic characters in one font, along with enough diacriticals to be useful for Western languages. Won't work for Cyrillic, etc. You can use it as a lyrics font, but you'll have to pick Italics and diactriticals from the character map.

I have a feeling that NWC doesn't intend to do Unicode. But certainly it could improve its lyrics capabilities by allowing different fonts for different lyrics lines. This ultimate character-by-character selection, as it is done with word processors, might be very incompatible with the *.nwc file format.

Don't forget that you can place your music into word processing document, using metafiles. You can leave lyrics empty and write them directly in the word processor as floating text, in any font that the word processor can handle. If you have the right software and know how, you can even change the font on existing metafile lyrics (not recommended for beginners).

Re: Lyric Fonts

Reply #2 –
Thank you, Robert. Are the italics in typing order of the C1 table in your font? I have found a Greek font, Hellas Times, where the Greek characters are in typing order of the C1 table. The English Characters are in the C0 table. In Noteworthy, if you select the Greek unicode (or any unicode language for that matter,) the Lyric tool reads from the C1 table. Thus, with Hellas Times, I can have both Greek and English lyrics. With Times New Roman Greek, however, the C1 table is filled up with accented letters and such and the Greek characters are in the Greek table. So, if I try to use Greek characters in the Lyric tool with Times New Roman, I get gibberish. This is how I realized that Noteworthy does not have true unicode support.

If your font has the italic letters in the C1 table, I could just switch languages and get italic type. I will look for your font and experiment with it.

Also, I would like to know how to change the font in a .wmf metafile. Are there instructions someplace?

Re: Lyric Fonts

Reply #3 –
OK. I answered my own question. Your font does not maintain the typing order in the C1 table and thus you must, indeed, use the character map, tediously.

May I ask, how did you create this font? Perhaps I can recreated it with the italic characters in typing order. Then it would be extremely useful.

Re: Lyric Fonts

Reply #4 –
To create a font, you need a font editor program (not cheap), and know-how. If you have a font editor, it's not too hard to simply shuffle characters around. But be careful: some code locations are prohibited (reserved for non-printing controls) and others do not work in some programs.

It's not hard to pick out what you want from the character map. Select the characters in order (might involve double-click on the character, depending on your character map). Then, paste them into a Notepad document for future use. The diacriticals actually overhand the following symbol. Not the best appearance, but good enough.

Re: Lyric Fonts

Reply #5 –
Thanks again, Robert. I downloaded Font Creator (a shareware program) and was astonished at how simple it was to copy and paste from one font to another. Using Hellas Greek as a base, I replaced the Greek letters with Italic letters from Times New Roman Italic. However, I could not find the location to place capital W, capital Q, and lower-case Q. I solved this problem by replacing the accented capital E with capital W, the accented capital O with capital Q, and the accented lower-case O with a lower-case Q. I probably could have solved the problem normally, but I am as yet unfamiliar with the mapping protocols of Truetype fonts.

Anyway, Hellas Times has a convention that, if you press the semi-colon key before pressing a vowel, the vowel produced will have an accent. Therefore, in my new font, if you want a Capital Q, you press the semi-colon, then a capital O, and you get the Q. You do the same for a lower-case q, press semi-colon, then a lower-case o. A capital W will be produced by the semi-colon followed by a capital E.

The name of my font is TimeItal.ttf and I will upload it to the Scriptorium. If someone wants to use it, they must go to the keyboard icon in the control panel and add Greek as a language. (The Windows CD will be needed.) In Noteworthy Composer, you will be able to use both regular and italic letters in the Font window. Just select TimeItal as the lyric font, then when you want regular letters, use the English keyboard. When you want italic letters, switch to the Greek keyboard (icon should be in the system tray) and type away! Remember about the W, Q, and q, however.
 

Re: Lyric Fonts

Reply #6 –
There you go! The biggest potential problem with fonts occurs if you place a character in an unacceptable location. Many Windows programs (including NWC and MS Word) accept characters in a few locations that are not accepted by every program on Windows.

With languages, a problem is that some specialized fonts were first created on Mac before being converted for Windows. The Mac allows characters in some locations that are not accepted by Windows, except for "symbolic" fonts. Whoever converted the fonts did not know this, and fialed to shuffle the character locations.

Theoretically, this is all solved by Unicode. Theoretically, web browsers are standards compliant. Theoretically.