OTF in Finale, and problems

Music notation symbols, fonts, font sources and font creation, SmuFL.
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OCTO
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OTF in Finale, and problems

Post by OCTO »

Hi. I have purchased Glyphs Mini to be able to adjust some of fonts for my need.
When I edited Maestro, and saved it as another font, I get many symbols messed up, so instead of :4 -notehead I get fff

Anyone using Glyphs Mini, and how to adjust fonts to be compatible with Finale? Does OTF work?
I have to send my edited font to my copyist, and he uses Windows (I use OS X Yosemite). I guess there will be some discrepancy?
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OCTO
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Re: OTF in Finale, and problems

Post by OCTO »

It is very strange.
Here is a screenshot from Glyphs, clearly the notehead is œ, unicode 0153:
shot 5.png
shot 5.png (79.48 KiB) Viewed 11188 times
In Finale the normal Maestro shows as well œ symbol at place 207:
shot 4.png
shot 4.png (39.78 KiB) Viewed 11188 times
But when I change to my edited Maestro the œ symbol remains the same notehead, but the symbols get to fff, choosing letter Ï:
shot 3.png
shot 3.png (55.41 KiB) Viewed 11188 times
So my question: why does Finale choose "slot" but not the symbol? And WHAT is the slot in Finale? Why it is not as simple as "letter œ means the black notehead" instead?
DatOrganistTho
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Re: OTF in Finale, and problems

Post by DatOrganistTho »

I think this is a fabulous reason for the SMuFL. Lots of people bash it, but it would be awfully nice to have some agreement on the font glyph locations and areas.
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Knut
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Re: OTF in Finale, and problems

Post by Knut »

DatOrganistTho wrote:Lots of people bash it,
Really? On what grounds?
I completely agree with your assessment, though.
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odod
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Re: OTF in Finale, and problems

Post by odod »

i suggest fontlab to edit or create the fonts, and dont forget to set Symbol for the Encoding and Unicode
Capture.JPG
Capture.JPG (329.55 KiB) Viewed 11154 times
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Knut
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Re: OTF in Finale, and problems

Post by Knut »

odod wrote:i suggest fontlab to edit or create the fonts, and dont forget to set Symbol for the Encoding and Unicode
The price of FontLab is $649, while Glyphs Mini is available for only 44.99 €. If the functionality of Glyphs Mini covers your needs, FontLab is both bloated and very expensive.

Symbol encoding is only relevant on Windows, while OCTO is a Mac user.

That said, this does indeed seems to be an issue with the selected encoding. Basically, the slots in Finale represent a way to index the font, and as such, the order and number of symbols will depend on the codepage(s) supported. To replicate the Maestro indexing on a mac, you'll need to make sure to select codepage 1252 Latin 1 only. I can't speak to where or how to do this in Glyphs, unfortunately. The chosen font format is nevertheless irrelevant.
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odod
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OTF in Finale, and problems

Post by odod »

Ahh forgot that octo uses mac .. But, eveyone has their own preference .. Anyway i followed wesselin's and other members guide about making music font on other forum, for mac ocot needs to set MACOS ROMAN Encoding and generate as suit format not ttf (works for me on mac).. Sorry if the comment was useless


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Last edited by odod on 30 Jun 2016, 12:05, edited 2 times in total.
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OCTO
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Re: OTF in Finale, and problems

Post by OCTO »

Thanks Knut.
I purchased Glyphs Mini in hope to easily create symbols for my needs. It seems I wasted money since there are no settings for such things.
I used FontForge but now it is very unstable, takes time to load and so on.
Back to the subject I now wonder why does Finale look at position 207 but not at the code name?

Also, when I open Maestro in FF many symbols are duplicated. How that can be possible?
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Knut
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Re: OTF in Finale, and problems

Post by Knut »

OCTO wrote:Thanks Knut.
I purchased Glyphs Mini in hope to easily create symbols for my needs. It seems I wasted money since there are no settings for such things.
Really? That sounds very unlikely. Are you sure you've checked every nuke and cranny?
Back to the subject I now wonder why does Finale look at position 207 but not at the code name?
I think this has to do with Finale's very limited support for Unicode. There still is no added control over extended unicode ranges with this implementation, and such fonts still can't be selected as the default music font. Basically, this has strictly been a back-end change with no adds or changes to the UI. As such, Finale's own indexing of fonts still is a reflection of the program pre Unicode.
Also, when I open Maestro in FF many symbols are duplicated. How that can be possible?
I have no idea, unfortunately. Theoretically, I guess this could happen if multiple code points where selected for certain symbols in the original font file, but Maestro has none of those, at least not in the PostScript file (which is the only one I have installed).
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tisimst
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Re: OTF in Finale, and problems

Post by tisimst »

Knut wrote:
OCTO wrote:Also, when I open Maestro in FF many symbols are duplicated. How that can be possible?
I have no idea, unfortunately. Theoretically, I guess this could happen if multiple code points where selected for certain symbols in the original font file, but Maestro has none of those, at least not in the PostScript file (which is the only one I have installed).
I just opened Maestro.ttf (MAC encoding) with FF (v.20150824 and v.20160407) and I can confirm to not see any duplicate glyphs either. So, not sure what is causing you to see duplicates. Here's what I see:
Maestro.ttf (Mac) - all glyphs.png
Maestro.ttf (Mac) - all glyphs.png (124.76 KiB) Viewed 11111 times
Maestro-TrebleClef-GlyphInfo-AlternateUni.png
Maestro-TrebleClef-GlyphInfo-AlternateUni.png (52.23 KiB) Viewed 11111 times
For some reason, the fonts that come with Sibelius DO show duplicates:
OpusStd.otf (UnicodeBmp) - all glyphs and AlternateUni.png
OpusStd.otf (UnicodeBmp) - all glyphs and AlternateUni.png (85.43 KiB) Viewed 11111 times
I'm not sure why Sibelius requires the alternate code points, but I've noticed that if I remove the alternate encodings, then Sibelius can't see the glyphs. I haven't tried the other way around yet.
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