OCTO wrote:I am curious what is the way to create a complete new font from zero.
This is a great question. Personally, I would say the hardest part of creating a music font from scratch is achieving the proper b/w balance between glyphs. This is more than just the glyph design, too, because the truth is, in the end, you'll need to decide on engraving settings that match the font as well (e.g., staff line thickness, stem thickness, etc.). These together make the font a truly beautiful. Now to your questions specifically...
OCTO wrote:1. How difficult is to manually create a font? Is this the way one create a music font? What are tools (both analog and digital), what are tests that one must pass in order to create a sufficient working font pallete?
It can be very challenging to start from a clean slate, especially if you've never done it before. I've done it this way as I'm sure Knut and others have as well. My tools include Inkscape and FontForge exclusively. I usually create the curves in Inkscape, export as EPS file, and then import the EPS to FontForge's "Guide" layer (since all glyphs can see it) and then one-by-one moving each glyph's curves to the "Foreground" layer for final positioning. It depends on the intended app exactly which glyph goes where, but the idea is the same.
For starters, as a usable minimum, I'd say that a font should contain the following:
- Rests: whole to 128th
- Flags: 8th to 128th (up and down)
- Note Heads: whole, half, quarter, and augmentation dot (.)
- Clefs: treble, bass, alto
- Time Signature: 0-9, C and cut-C
- Accidentals: double flat, flat, natural, sharp, double sharp
- Dynamics: f, m, p, r, s, z
- Articulations: staccato (.), sforzato (>), tenuto (-)
- Ornaments: trill (tr), wiggle (~), and arpeggio (vertical ~)
- Standard Fermata (up and down)
- Sustain Pedal Marks: P, e, d, Ped., * (end sustain star)
OCTO wrote:2. If one wants to create a "copy" of font, let us say Peters 1880, isn't it difficult to find all symbols that would be scanned and digitally outlined? I mean, it is hardly that one music piece includes all symbols of complete music font.
In many ways this is a lot easier than creating a font from scratch, but you're right that it can be a challenge to find all the symbols you'd like to. Usually, I find that by consulting various piano and orchestral scores I can find most symbols I would like to. The remaining are either omitted or carefully crafted to match the rest.
Here are some thoughts about "copying" a font from historical scores:
1. Scan in originals at no smaller than 600dpi if you have a choice. I have worked at MUCH lower resolution when that wasn't possible, but you want to make sure you can properly see all the important features of the symbols.
2. Use as few points as possible, but don't be afraid to add more as necessary to get the right shape.
3. Wherever possible make curve end-points smooth and constrain the off-curve points to be vertical or horizontal. Just trust me on this one. The shapes will be cleaner and you'll have more control over the final designs.
4. Avoid using the "S" shape of a single curve if you can. It is good design practice to break the curve into two smaller ones at the inflection point. This is particularly critical when you know you might save the font as a TTF since they mostly use quadratic curves (which can't do "S" curves).
5. Avoid automatically outlining the shapes. Unless the symbol's image has REALLY clean edges or you want a grungy look, you'll more than likely be re-doing most of the work anyway.
That's about all I can think of at the moment. Those are some of the things I've learned from making my own fonts and replicating others. Hope that helps!
