Why treat the Notation font differently from say, User 1 or Staff Bold?

Topic: Why treat the Notation font differently from say, User 1 or Staff Bold? (Read 8645 times) previous topic - next topic

Why treat the Notation font differently from say, User 1 or Staff Bold?

18 years ago

If NWC2 did not:

The Fonts page would be simpler. Spinbox for:Staff Metrics , checkbox for Scale Fonts
Notation font names and encodings could be what the user wants.
NWC2STDA Bold could be a user designed high visibility font
encodingID's would only matter for errant emulators. The user could design around them.
The Notation font would be available for Text objects. The user could add glyphs that are only useful at the same fontsize and have it all change together.

You would get some strange results if you chose Arial Bold Italic for Notation, but no stranger than choosing Marlett as Staff Bold. The default would be NWC2STDA:fontsize=StaffMetrics. I don't much appreciate NWC2 not allowing me to use fonts the way I want to use them. IMHO, it would be a better program if it did not.

Re: Why treat the Notation font differently from say, User 1 or Staff Bold?

Reply #1 – 18 years ago

Quote from: Rick G. – 18 years ago

Notation font names and encodings could be what the user wants.

Yes, but how would we also easily be able to select NWC2STDA, NWC2MusikDingsSerif, and all of those?
If we had that in addition to the rest of the Font Selection items, it would be a good idea. It would also be nice not to be confined to a symbol font.

Re: Why treat the Notation font differently from say, User 1 or Staff Bold?

Reply #2 – 18 years ago

Look at the way the Fonts page works now. If you have User 1 set to say, NWC2STDA and you select it and click: Modify..., NWC2STDA is highlighted from an alphabetical list of all installed fonts. NWC2* won't be too far away. The size won't change unless you explicitly change it. What could be simpler? It is also how every Windows user expects to change a font. Why reinvent the wheel?

Re: Why treat the Notation font differently from say, User 1 or Staff Bold?

Reply #3 – 18 years ago

Rick, I'm afraid I really don't understand what it is you're suggesting could be improved. Are you saying you just want to move the "Staff Metrics" slot down into the white part of the dialogue box, so you just change it as you do the other fonts?

I think that could be okay, but you'd lose the functionality of the vertical metrics that show up when you press Change.

Also the notation typeface is probably deliberately restricted to notation fonts. Otherwise you'd have some, perhaps many, newer users who would accidentally change to some alphameric font, and never be able to figure out why they aren't producing written notes.

Re: Why treat the Notation font differently from say, User 1 or Staff Bold?

Reply #4 – 18 years ago

Put a spinbox for "Staff Size in points" and a checkbox for "Scale Other Fonts" at the top.
Add "Staff Notation" to the the fonts list. Default it to NWC2STDA. If you select it and click Modify the same thing happens as any for other font. "Staff Notation" would be available as a font for a text object, saving me a lot of setup everytime I need a small clef. Yes, it will look weird if someone chooses "Arial", but no stranger that it already looks if you open a song with a font that is not installed. I can open a file in Wordpad, select all and choose "Webdings" as the font. Looks awful. Can't read any of it. So what?

I see the change to the Fonts Page as cumbersome and needlessly complex. Why use anything other that the standard Font Selection Dialog to select a font?

Re: Why treat the Notation font differently from say, User 1 or Staff Bold?

Reply #5 – 18 years ago

I don't know what a spinbox is, but if you modify User1 to NW2STDA at the size you want, you can insert your small clefs anytime/anyplace just as a regular text entry.

I'm not sure why Eric chose to implement the Staff Metrics feature the way he did it, but I think the main difference is that it's been moved from the options page. It's easier to find here, and easier to use.

Quote

Why use anything other that the standard Font Selection Dialog to select a font?

If I think of other programs such as Word, when I make a font choice, it's one choice at a time. Here, we can adjust 13 fonts from the one page, although it is, I agree, cumbersome to have to use the modify button for each one, going to another tab, fixing it, and coming back again. But that's pretty much the same as what I've found with custom font colours in Word, for instance.

I'm happy with the current font system in NWC2. But I don't mind a change, if it's an improvement. What do other people want?

Re: Why treat the Notation font differently from say, User 1 or Staff Bold?

Reply #6 – 18 years ago

I think I understand what Rick is getting at, but in reality, you either click the "Change" button in the staff metrics area of the fonts dialogue, or you click the "Modify" button for the rest of the fonts. Either way, you end up with another dialogue box, so I don't see that there's really much difference.

At least the notation typeface dialogue has a filter mechanism built in that thins out the selection. However, as stated elswhere, even if your version of a NWC2 font does not start with NWC2 you can still select it, you just have to type it in. Personally, I think this is a convenience that will help reduce confusion. Otherwise, I can just imagine the support calls...

As for the notation typeface font being specifically a symbol font, I can only assume that there are programmatic reasons why this is deemed more appropriate. Not being a programmer myself, I don't feel entitled to an opinion...

Re: Why treat the Notation font differently from say, User 1 or Staff Bold?

Reply #7 – 18 years ago

David: This is a spinbox
Idealy, one could select anything except a barline and change the font, pointsize and the characters that represent it, but "you have to walk before you can run."

Lawrie: Then how about a separate interface for Staff Italic, restricting selection to italic fonts?

IIRC, symbol encoding was Microsoft's attempt to identify a font that did not need codepage internationalization. This seems to have cause a collective yawn in academia and the rest of the computing community.

They do seem to agree on ISO 8859-1 Note the grey area where NWC2STDA's flags are.

I'm just trying to simplify things while NWC2 is still in Beta. Too often, in a misguided effort to keep the user from doing somethng wrong, the interface makes it difficult to do what they want, or worse: to do anything at all. It is appropriate to throw up an "Are you sure?" box before the system reformats your hard drive, but here, if you don't like what you see, just hit Ctrl+Z. (hey, that rhymes!).

Re: Why treat the Notation font differently from say, User 1 or Staff Bold?

Reply #8 – 18 years ago

Quote from: Rick G. – 18 years ago

<snip>
Lawrie: Then how about a separate interface for Staff Italic, restricting selection to italic fonts?

Weellll, I can imagine possibly wanting to use a non italic font where NWC uses Staff Italic but I can't imagine anyone wanting to use a non NWC2 typeface for the music... I mean, who wants to see a page full of "k"'s instead of black noteheads with "‚" or "ƒ" or "„" or "…" or "‡" or "ˆ" or "‰" or "Š" for flags?

<snip>
[/quote]

Re: Why treat the Notation font differently from say, User 1 or Staff Bold?

Reply #9 – 18 years ago

Quote from: Lawrie Pardy – 18 years ago

I mean, who wants to see a page full of "k"'s instead of black noteheads with "‚" or "ƒ" or "„" or "…" or "‡" or "ˆ" or "‰" or "Š" for flags?

For "bersyl91", it would be progress. He's still getting boxes.

I can't think of anything NWC2 uses Staff Italic for that I would want to see as roman.

Re: Why treat the Notation font differently from say, User 1 or Staff Bold?

Reply #10 – 18 years ago

Quote from: Rick G. – 18 years ago

I can't think of anything NWC2 uses Staff Italic for that I would want to see as roman.

Staff Italic, which is Times New Roman by default, is used for Tempo Variations such as accelerando. There are circumstances in which those markings are not italic.

On the other hand, are there any circumstances when

Code: [Select · Download]

!NoteWorthyComposerClip(2.0,Single)
|Clef|Type:Treble
|TimeSig|Signature:Common
|Note|Dur:4th|Pos:-6
|Note|Dur:4th|Pos:-4
|Note|Dur:4th|Pos:-2
|Rest|Dur:4th
!NoteWorthyComposerClip-End

should show up as:

Code: [Select · Download]

a d k k k n

Re: Why treat the Notation font differently from say, User 1 or Staff Bold?

Reply #11 – 18 years ago

Having been on the support side of complex software most of my professional life I can understand not using the standard windows font selection mechanism. For those of use familliar with the software and the difference between fonts used for text and those used for notes et al it would not matter much which way it goes. For a beginner it may well not be so straight forward. In that case I can see the number of support calls going up. Not all attempts to keep novice users on the straight and narrow are misguided. In my experience most programers do not enjoy re-inventing the wheel and most instences of it I have seen are either at the customers request or an attempt to save themselves from a myriad of support calls because the accepted norm for doing something in the operating system environment they were dealing in would be prone mistakes by novice users of the software.

Keith

Re: Why treat the Notation font differently from say, User 1 or Staff Bold?

Reply #12 – 18 years ago

I've just re-read Rick's first message in this discussion and thought about it some more...

Quote from: Rick G. – 18 years ago

<snip>
The Fonts page would be simpler. Spinbox for:Staff Metrics , checkbox for Scale Fonts
Notation font names and encodings could be what the user wants.
NWC2STDA Bold could be a user designed high visibility font
encodingID's would only matter for errant emulators. The user could design around them.
The Notation font would be available for Text objects. The user could add glyphs that are only useful at the same fontsize and have it all change together.
<snip>

In above order:

Not sure I'm concerned either way about having a spinbox...
Notation font names can already be what the user wants - they just don't show in the list if they don't start with NWC2. I don't know if there are programmatic reasons why it is better to have the font as a symbol font
I guess, that way I may not have been tempted to bother with "NWC2HiVisLP"
No opinion
I really like this idea - it would be nice to have access to the notation font for use as text without having to burn a user font. Perhaps we can persuade Eric to make the notation font available in the |Insert|Text| dialogue