Re: LilyPond Feta font - natural design

[Janek Warchoł]

Hi,

2013/12/3 Han-Wen Nienhuys <address@hidden>:
> On Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 7:07 PM, Janek Warchoł <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> in commit ce521e79fd7669b45c8c1132e4b5693a03b5d90a you wrote "The
>> stems of the natural are brushed (at least, in Barenreiter SCS )".  Do
>> you have some scans showing this?  And maybe some scans showing your
>> inspiration for flats?
>
> I've put a scan I had lying around of Barenreiter SCS (It's the 1956
> edition of the Solo Cello Suites by Bach from Baerenreiter).
>
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5fi7waIFeX7cjBvbTZWNFJfLXM/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks!  This is helpful.

>> I'd like to know what you intended to mimic when designing the font -
>> i'm not satisfied with how the accidentals look in print now, and
>> maybe i could do something to improve this.  Currently if you print in
>> 600 dpi (that surely is not professional resolution, but it's quite
>> decent) the accidentals look really bad - flats have visibly jagged
>> stems, and naturals are distorted (it's actually visible with a naked
>> eye).
>
> At the time we designed this, we were not using scalable fonts, so
> there was an option to tweak the bitmap fonts to adapt to the
> limitations of the printer. Now that things are using scalable fonts,
> the correct approach is to figure out how to add hinting to the fonts
> so the stems are not brushed on 600 dpi and coarser printers.

That would definitely be great, but it's beyond my skills (and time
available) now. :-/

> (I hope you're not suggesting to remove the brushing.)

No, but i'm thinking whether it could be adjusted a bit so that it
would print better.
I have an idea about this, but i'll have to think about it more before posting.

At the moment it would be great if you (or someone else with Metafont
experience) could look at my cleanup of the font files - it's up in
dev/janek/metafont-cleanup branch.  Part of it was already checked by
Werner; i'm pretty confident in the "reorganizing" commits, but the
last two - where i'm actually rewriting Metafont code for naturals and
sharps - should be checked by someone.  I don't know Metafont very
well, so i could've screwed up something with rounding, define_pixels
and so on.

Thanks in advance!
Janek