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Line thicknesses/Sibelius

Posted: 31 Mar 2017, 07:42
by harpsi
I have been reading the forum's threads on line thickness with pleasure. Really interesting and this forum is a truly useful resource. Right now I am working on layouting a score in Sibelius and I have to change lots of things in the file - I did not do it from scratch. The line settings were a bit upside down for my taste:

Staff lines 0.19
Barlines 0.16
Stems 0.1

Question: What would be the reason for these settings? I know that some prefer staff lines thicker than the rest, but so much?

I changed this to

Staff lines 0.1
Stems 0.13
Barlines 0.16

which made the music easier to read. I also changed from Opus font to Norfolk, I think I will keep it.

Question: When inputting the numbers in Sibelius, I found that they all round off. 0.12 will be 0.13, 0.11 will be 0.1, 0.15 will be 0.16. Etc.
Why is it like this? Is there a special procedure to input other numbers?

Re: Line thicknesses/Sibelius

Posted: 31 Mar 2017, 20:15
by Schonbergian
Thicker staff lines require correspondingly larger and heavier noteheads to match, in addition to other suitably heavy elements. Opus (like most modern music fonts) has relatively anemic noteheads and is designed with a very light line weight in mind (not to mention the other horrific design elements of Opus). Older hand-engraved scores made thicker staff lines work by:

- Using ink, which bled into the paper and ensured that most smaller elements had a consistent weight, and
- Making use of much larger noteheads that appeared in the foreground even with heavier lines all around.

However, I do agree that barlines and stems should not be lighter than staff lines.

Re: Line thicknesses/Sibelius

Posted: 31 Mar 2017, 22:12
by Harpsichordmaker
Schonbergian wrote: 31 Mar 2017, 20:15 Thicker staff lines require correspondingly larger and heavier noteheads to match, in addition to other suitably heavy elements. Opus (like most modern music fonts) has relatively anemic noteheads and is designed with a very light line weight in mind (not to mention the other horrific design elements of Opus).
Norfolk, a derivative from Bravura, is more substantial than Opus and allows thicker staff lines.
May I ask what is the consensus about Opus, and what are the horrific elements?
Please trust I'm only asking to learn what is to be looked at when reviewing a font, no polemic purposes here. :)

Re: Line thicknesses/Sibelius

Posted: 01 Apr 2017, 01:37
by Schonbergian
Harpsichordmaker wrote: 31 Mar 2017, 22:12
Schonbergian wrote: 31 Mar 2017, 20:15 Thicker staff lines require correspondingly larger and heavier noteheads to match, in addition to other suitably heavy elements. Opus (like most modern music fonts) has relatively anemic noteheads and is designed with a very light line weight in mind (not to mention the other horrific design elements of Opus).
Norfolk, a derivative from Bravura, is more substantial than Opus and allows thicker staff lines.
May I ask what is the consensus about Opus, and what are the horrific elements?
Please trust I'm only asking to learn what is to be looked at when reviewing a font, no polemic purposes here. :)
Norfolk is still slightly too small for my tastes, but I agree that it is a welcome improvement over Opus.

Opus just screams "designed by an amateur" to me. For instance, the treble clef is horribly imbalanced - the vertical line going through the eye is off-centre and the clef seems quite imbalanced because of it. The noteheads are both rather small and incredibly wide. Even Maestro is (to me) a better designed font than Opus.

Re: Line thicknesses/Sibelius

Posted: 01 Apr 2017, 13:37
by Harpsichordmaker
Schonbergian wrote: 01 Apr 2017, 01:37
Harpsichordmaker wrote: 31 Mar 2017, 22:12
Schonbergian wrote: 31 Mar 2017, 20:15 Thicker staff lines require correspondingly larger and heavier noteheads to match, in addition to other suitably heavy elements. Opus (like most modern music fonts) has relatively anemic noteheads and is designed with a very light line weight in mind (not to mention the other horrific design elements of Opus).
Norfolk, a derivative from Bravura, is more substantial than Opus and allows thicker staff lines.
May I ask what is the consensus about Opus, and what are the horrific elements?
Please trust I'm only asking to learn what is to be looked at when reviewing a font, no polemic purposes here. :)
Norfolk is still slightly too small for my tastes, but I agree that it is a welcome improvement over Opus.

Opus just screams "designed by an amateur" to me. For instance, the treble clef is horribly imbalanced - the vertical line going through the eye is off-centre and the clef seems quite imbalanced because of it. The noteheads are both rather small and incredibly wide. Even Maestro is (to me) a better designed font than Opus.
Thank you, Schoenbergian.

Re: Line thicknesses/Sibelius

Posted: 01 Apr 2017, 15:44
by harpsi
Thanks to both of you.

Actually I tried to use Engraver font first, but there was an issue with the percussion clef that did not position itself correctly.
Anyway, I feel that Norfolk is an improvement over Opus in this case. The page format is a3 and I have set the staff size to 5 mm. To my eyes, 0.1 spaces for the staff lines is OK. The next possible space setting is 0.13 and I feel that is too thick.

The mystery of only being able to choose 0.1, 0.13, 0.16 etc. continues unsolved...

Re: Line thicknesses/Sibelius

Posted: 07 Apr 2017, 05:50
by dspreadbury
The rounding in Sibelius's UI is caused by the fact that under the hood its resolution allows for increments of 1/32nd of a space, or 0.03125 in decimal. All of the fields in the UI are displayed to two decimal places, which means that they are rounded to the nearest hundredth.

Re: Line thicknesses/Sibelius

Posted: 07 Apr 2017, 15:02
by odod
dspreadbury wrote: 07 Apr 2017, 05:50 The rounding in Sibelius's UI is caused by the fact that under the hood its resolution allows for increments of 1/32nd of a space, or 0.03125 in decimal. All of the fields in the UI are displayed to two decimal places, which means that they are rounded to the nearest hundredth.
Thanks for the explanation Daniel .. :)

Re: Line thicknesses/Sibelius

Posted: 08 Apr 2017, 09:47
by harpsi
Thanks, that explains it.