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Topic: A call for comments on a proposed change to my *Dings suites (Read 6556 times) previous topic - next topic

A call for comments on a proposed change to my *Dings suites

G'day all,
I've been thinking about a change to the *Dings suites.  Specifically adding a glyph to the *Text and *TextEuro fonts.

There has been some comment regarding "Word Extenders" and a few workarounds that are kind of OK, but a proper line as part of the font used for the lyrics is IMHO a better idea.

The proposed character is 0144 which is unused in each pair of fonts.  By using this free character, no existing works will be affected.

Comments please?

I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: A call for comments on a proposed change to my *Dings suites

Reply #1 –
I'd say go for it, if it doesn't affect the previous compositions with that font.  You should probably let us know when it's done, so we can all go get the new one.  By the way...what is a "word extender?"

Re: A call for comments on a proposed change to my *Dings suites

Reply #2 –
G'day Bob,
got a trial copy on the newsgroup at the moment - not much happening though...

A "word extender" is the line that extends from the end of a word and under notes that are tied or slurred to indicate that the word should be sung through the additional notes.  It helps singers to know when a word should finish.  It is especially useful for singers who cannot read music.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: A call for comments on a proposed change to my *Dings suites

Reply #3 –
Those are quite useful.  I support this idea.

Re: A call for comments on a proposed change to my *Dings suites

Reply #4 –
I agree.  I wish there was a way to do this in NWC2...  It's really pretty simple...any time you tie the word to another note or slur the word to another note (drunk or not), you extend it.  I think it's a feature the lyrics handler needs to be able to take care of, but, in the meantime, it would be nice to have an extender.  I find it annoying that I can't type an underspace into the lyrics, because the underspace functions as a whitespace character, since the whitespace functions as a separator character.

Re: A call for comments on a proposed change to my *Dings suites

Reply #5 –
I support this effort very strongly, as most of what I do with NWC is vocal music for singers who do not read music very well. Word extenders are very common, and a strong argument for me is that the Barbershop Notation Manual includes a clear requirement for this.

--Christian
NWC on Ubuntu Linux/Wine

Re: A call for comments on a proposed change to my *Dings suites

Reply #6 –
Will these be incorporated into a font that is likely used to type the lyrics, or will they be inserted as separate symbols?

Re: A call for comments on a proposed change to my *Dings suites

Reply #7 –
G'day Bob,
I think you're aware that I have 3 font suites for use with NWC:  SwingDings, MusikDingsSans and MusikDingsSerif.

Each suite contains an NWC2 alternative system font, an alternative to Boxmark2 (with additional glyphs), a text font (with extra symbols for line drawing etc.), a text font with Euro enhancements and a chord construction font.

The new characters (there has to be 2 of 'em) are in the text font, so that would be: SwingText, MusikTextSans and MusikTextSerif.

To use the word extenders you will have to select one of these fonts as your lyric font in page setup.

So far, testing indicates that you may need to use a combination of inclusion of the new characters in your lyrics AND text objects.  For some occasions, inclusion in the lyrics is sufficient, for other situations inclusion is still required, but the addition of text objects will be required to literally fill in the gaps.

This is unfortunate but is a natural result of how lyrics are processed in NWC.  The only way around it that I can see would be to modify NWC to place a line drawn programatically from the end of a word on a tied or slurred note to the last note of the tie or slur.  However this would need to be able to be overridden as you wouldn't always want them to appear, and you could even want both in the same song...

The only font that has them at the moment is a test version of SwingText that is only available via the NG.  This is deliberate as I don't want "every man and his dog" getting a copy of what is really a pre-alpha test...

I know that Christian has access and he has already tried the first version, I don't know if he has yet seen the second version I posted 6 days ago...
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: A call for comments on a proposed change to my *Dings suites

Reply #8 –
Quote
I know that Christian has access and he has already tried the first version, I don't know if he has yet seen the second version I posted 6 days ago...

Yes, Lawrie, I have downloaded and tried your second version, it works for me. Obviously, in many cases I still need to use text as well. Have you thought about introducing still another character to be used to fill gaps as text, one that would have width?

--Christian
NWC on Ubuntu Linux/Wine

Re: A call for comments on a proposed change to my *Dings suites

Reply #9 –
G'day Christian,

Quote from: Christian Carlsson –
Have you thought about introducing still another character to be used to fill gaps as text, one that would have width?

Yeah, but there is a severe lack of room in the font...  In any case, you can always pad text entries with spaces...  Shame that doesn't work in the lyric editor, though you can use underscores.  The problem with this approach is that barlines tend to get shifted right...

Of the 2 current characters, the first - the left justified one - has virtually no width, but the glyph extends for the distance of 2 underscores.  The other, right justified one, has the width of 1 underscore, but extends for 5 underscores, thus overlap is easy to achieve...

When used as text entries, the right justified one, followed by the left justified one in a single text entry will give a 7 underscore long line that can be positioned fairly easily by padding with spaces either before or after the line characters as well as creative use of justification and alignment.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.
 

Re: A call for comments on a proposed change to my *Dings suites

Reply #10 –
All of the above makes sense.

I must say that while figuring out how to reprogram Noteworthy to do that sounds complex, the feature would work somewhat like the "Lyric Syllable: Default/Always/Never" attribute (I love that feature!) for notes and rests:
"Word extender: Default/Always/Never"

This would allow for the maximum possibilties with the word extender (if NWC2 should incorporate it into the program).