Thank you very much for your thoughts and praise, Fluffeh. Let me address each point separately.
Fluffeh wrote:I think that the quaver flag should be wider, just a little under the width of a crotchet notehead — this is a issue I have with most common fonts. The flag should support the notehead; as a counterweight when the note is up-stemmed, and as a base when the note is down-stemmed. Currently it appears as if the note will fall over because there isn't enough width on the flag for the notehead to rest on.
The flags (and the font in general) are inspired by Durand's classic house style, and their flags have a similar issue. While a recognize, after many discussions on this subject, that you are not alone in having this opinion, I personally look at it as a stylistic choice. They are particularly space efficient, which is a basic concept of my design, and I'm therefore not likely to change them at this point.
I also think that the size of the accent should be reduced. The width of an accent should be a little bit wider than a crotchet notehead — perhaps around the width of a ledger line. Currently the accent is as wide as a semibreve, which I think also presents a problem when it comes to combination accents. For example, the tenuto line should be the width of a notehead. The accent in a tenuto-accent would dwarf the tenuto line at this size.
This has been discussed at length in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=29&p=404&hilit=accent#p378, and the accents displayed here are only one of three possible stylistic choices included in the font. I've chosen them here to comply with Durand's 1st edition of the piece.
Lastly, I think there should be more space between the inner and outer spiral of the treble clef, though I believe that this topic amongst others have been discussed in a previous thread.
I think this impression may be an unfortunate result of the flattening of the JPEG image. For a pdf example of the same clef see here:
download/file.php?id=750
For the commentary at the top, I think I am not qualified in the slightest to talk about the actual design of the glyphs, but I would either decrease the size or the weight of the text. The commentary pops out more than the music, but I think it should pop out equally with the actual music, if not less.
Again, I think the JPEG flattening makes it worse than it really is, but I agree with you that, ideally, the weight should be perfectly balanced between the text and the score. The problem, however, is that this particular style is designed to chiefly work for text expressions within a score, which requires a slightly bolder face than what is common for more elaborate page text. A common problem with modern musical editions, also discussed previously on this board, is the frequent choice of light and high contrasting typefaces for musical text. Unfortunately, there aren't currently a whole lot of text fonts available which are especially designed with music in mind, and this is the main reason why I've ventured into creating my own.
In time, I do hope to supply this font with a weight that is more suitable for page text, but for the time being, musical expressions is my main concern.
Gould implies that cautionary accidents should be full size, though I am undecided on that one.
Regarding all your comments on the engraving, I'll refer you to the 1st edition of this piece here:
http://imslp.org/wiki/Special:ImagefromIndex/34320
As this is a font showcase, not an engraving excersise, I haven't taken it upon myself to (consciously) do anything besides copying the original engraving as closely as possible (in the short time I had this afternoon). For this reason I'd like to keep discussions on the engraving aspect of the examples to a minimum.
I will, however, break this principle for a comment on the size of the cautionary accidentals, and say that I strongly disagree with Gould on this point. Reducing the size of parenthesized accidentals has a long standing tradition in manual engraving. Such accidentals are not to influence the spacing in any way (if possible), and are therefore reduced by approximately one staff size, according to Ted Ross.