Re: Alternative music font

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi all,

Although I greatly prefer the Feta font to Gonville, I'm very much  
enjoying this thread — kudos to Simon and Jan for all their hard and  
considered work!

> it doesn't seem surprising to me that one answer doesn't satisfy  
> everybody's tastes!

Agreed — this is one of the great(est) benefits of open source  
software. In that spirit, I know that many people out there would  
love a font which looks handwritten — maybe once Gonville is  
integrated, you (Simon) could provide an API documentation patch, so  
that others might contribute/integrate their alternative fonts?

> One comment from a friend about the difference between the two fonts
> was that a thing he liked about Gonville was that it looked more  
> modern.

As you said, this will be a matter of taste — I much prefer the more  
traditional look of Feta to anything out there (Gonville or Igor  
Engraver's font or Finale's or Sibelius's or...).
Of course, I also maintain that number theory reached its apex  
sometime between Fermat and Euler, so take that as you may...  ;)

> It's interesting that you should mention that: that actually reminds
> me of one of my specific issues with Feta, namely that the curved
> centre line of its treble clef _does_ make it look to me as if it's
> leaning over backwards. Gonville's straight-backed version feels
> much more balanced to me.

You could probably just rotate that glyph in a TimeSignature  
override, if you wanted.  ;)

> it would be nicer if Lilypond itself could centre the digits
> around the 2nd and 4th lines of the stave in the case
> where they're smaller than 2*staff_spacing

Be sure to consider non-5-line staff situations.

Cheers,
Kieren.