Simplified "Stoic" Sagittal for 13-limit tonality diamond use

[ndentonprotsack]

Dave, these are brilliant! So readable, and neat-looking; I am definitely happy with this as a base design. I am seeing quite clearly what you said before about the limitations of my initial design.

And yes you are totally right, it’s a very interesting minimalist “art” in of itself for sure.

What is the next step? Should I take a stab at translating these to 8-PPSS? I will try my best to do them justice if so.

[Dave Keenan]

Dave, these are brilliant! So readable, and neat-looking; I am definitely happy with this as a base design. I am seeing quite clearly what you said before about the limitations of my initial design.

Thanks. But I worry that, when they are on a space, the 3-dent symbol is not very different from the 1-dent symbol. And of course we have the same problem with 7 and 5, and with 11 and 9.

What is the next step? Should I take a stab at translating these to 8-PPSS? I will try my best to do them justice if so.

That would be good. Hopefully you can make 3 and 1 more distinct in that regime.

[ndentonprotsack]

Hey Dave,

Have a look at these!

I address the issues you voiced with the 3-dent symbol on the 6ppss design, and also expanded them to 8ppss as well!

I think it is a small improvement, but Feel free to revise as necessary!



Best,
Nick

[Dave Keenan]

Those are great, Nicholas!

Your 6 ppss bitmaps prove that 3 dent and 1 dent can be made sufficiently distinct on a staff space, but they violate a kind of rule (based on my own observation), that I should have spelled out earlier. It's about two black pixels that meet diagonally (only at a corner), with no other pixels around the meeting point. This "law of maximum perversity" is that if you want those pixels to be seen as joined together, they wont be, and if you don't want them to be seen as joined together, they will be. So, such corner-only meetings should be avoided.

However, the final outline in the font can be a compromise between the two most recent 6 ppss forms of the scrolls, and indeed that is what you have done in the 8 ppss bitmaps on which the outlines would be more directly based.

Regarding the 8 ppss bitmaps, I wonder, if you were to delete the lowest pixel of every scroll, would it restore them to looking a little more scroll-like, without compromising any other properties? Perhaps you already tried that, and didn't like the look of it. If not, would you please try it.

I think the next step, once we are both happy with the bitmaps, would be for you to post the result back to the facebook thread, to see what others think of them.

I encourage you to install the free font-editing software FontForge — a beautifully designed piece of software, very easy to use — and use it to examine the attached obsolete version of the Sagittal font (which uses truetype outlines). I suggest examining this, rather than Bravura, because it lets you see how the Sagittals were composed from sub-glyphs, and it has a nice binary grid where one 8 ppss pixel corresponds to 64 font units. In Bravura (which uses postscript type 1 outlines) the sub-glyphs are all merged, and one 8 ppss pixel corresponds to 31.25 font units, and so it has rounding issues, which Douglas (cmloegcmluin) wrote a script to correct.

The sagittals start at U+F034. The sub-glyphs (components, elements) have no unicodes and are at the very end of the font.

[ndentonprotsack]

Thanks, Dave! Glad to hear you like them!

I took your advice, and deleted the bottom pixel on each scroll in the 8ppss design; the results are excellent, and I am super happy with them!



I have (as you may have already seen) posted them to the Xenharmonic Math Group, along with a couple questions about two temperaments I would like to use this notation system for. One is the original one we discussed (but extended to the 31-limit)--based on closely approximating JI. The other is a flexible, 31-limit 12ET-based system that is less accurate but more comprehensive and simple for performers trained in 12ET; it can also be used in ensembles that incorporate "12-locked instruments".

Regarding Fontforge, I am very eager to explore a little, and I have downloaded it... however, I couldn't get it to read the .ttf Sagittal file you sent, even after downloading it to my fonts! Any idea what might be wrong?

Best,
Nick

[Dave Keenan]

Regarding Fontforge, I am very eager to explore a little, and I have downloaded it... however, I couldn't get it to read the .ttf Sagittal file you sent, even after downloading it to my fonts! Any idea what might be wrong?

You don't need to install the font in your system to be able to open it with FontForge.

I just downloaded it and successfully opened it in two different ways: 1. Right click the file and choose "Open with ..." and navigate to fontforge.bat. 2. Launch FontForge and use the "Open font ..." dialog that comes up.

I'm using Windows 10. What OS are you using? Are you getting any error message?