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

ndentonprotsack
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Re: Simplified "Stoic" Sagittal for 13-limit tonality diamond use

Post by 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.
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Dave Keenan
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Re: Simplified "Stoic" Sagittal for 13-limit tonality diamond use

Post by Dave Keenan »

ndentonprotsack wrote: Tue Apr 06, 2021 3:34 pm 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.
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Re: Simplified "Stoic" Sagittal for 13-limit tonality diamond use

Post by 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!

Image

Best,
Nick
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Re: Simplified "Stoic" Sagittal for 13-limit tonality diamond use

Post by 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.
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ndentonprotsack
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Re: Simplified "Stoic" Sagittal for 13-limit tonality diamond use

Post by 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!

Image

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

Post by Dave Keenan »

ndentonprotsack wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 8:30 am 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?
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Re: Simplified "Stoic" Sagittal for 13-limit tonality diamond use

Post by ndentonprotsack »

Hey Dave,

Yes, I got it to work with the "Open with" method (I am using Windows 10 as well)---thanks! Was very interested to see that the symbols had all been broken down into component parts, instead of being a set of fully-fledged symbols. Would a similar method be adopted for Stoic?

Do you think the bitmaps I have made are ready to be adapted into fully-fledged symbols, or should we post them to Xen Alliance and Microtonal Music and Tuning Theory first, to get other people's opinions? What do you recommend our next step be?

Best,
Nick
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Re: Simplified "Stoic" Sagittal for 13-limit tonality diamond use

Post by Dave Keenan »

Hi Nick,

I think you should post the bitmaps (with explanation) to the end of your existing MM&TT thread for comment. Make it clear that while there is a hint of a curve in the right flags for the font, everything can still be just straight lines when handwritten.

If no-one finds any problems, then we can go on to add outline versions of them to that .ttf font. I'd be pleased if you were interested in learning to use FontForge to do this yourself. I'm happy to fill in any gaps in the FontForge documentation, give feedback, and do some final finessing of the outlines. Or I can do it all, but it may take me many weeks to get to it.

The component parts are not accessible to the outside world (they don't have unicodes), but are only used to create the fully-fledged (or perhaps fully fletched :) ) symbols. To see these, use View->Goto->U+F028.

Yes, you would start by adding the two new components — the 1,2,3-stackable version of the right scroll and the 3-stackable version of the left barb. The other three components already exist — the single left scroll, the 2-stackable left scroll and the shaft.

To create the new components, you would paste suitable 8 ppss bitmaps into a background layer and create smooth outlines over the top of them. You could copy existing right-scroll and left-barb outlines and modify them. Then you would create the 12 new symbols as various combinations of those components, and then create the downward symbols as flipped references to the upward symbols, for a total of 24 new symbols. Then we would convert these from TrueType (at 2048 units per em) to Type 1 postscript (at 1000 units per em), fix up any rounding problems using Douglas' script, add them to a renamed version of Bravura, and make this font available on the Sagittal website. Getting them into SMuFL and hence into the official version of Bravura, will take much longer, possibly years.

I agree with your earlier assessment, that there is no prospect of making sensible multi-shaft or X-shaft versions of these symbols, so Stoic will remain a strictly Evo notation, with no Revo extension.

Since these "Stoic" symbols are an alternative form of "Athenian" notation, it occurred to me to wonder whether the Stoic school of philosophy originated in Athens. Indeed it did! "The name derives from the porch (stoa poikilê) in the Agora at Athens decorated with mural paintings, where the members of the school congregated, and their lectures were held." from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/. So the Stoics were indeed alternative Athenians. :)
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Re: Simplified "Stoic" Sagittal for 13-limit tonality diamond use

Post by Dave Keenan »

I meant to say that I love your latest 8 ppss bitmaps, except I would make the 12 dent symbol wider, and more symmetrical about its staff position as follows:

Image

I also meant to tell you that I've been fixing up your attempts to display your attached images. Unfortunately, it doesn't work if you simply copy the attachment's file name and surround it with [img]...[/img] tags. What you need to do is right-click on the filename in the Attachments tab (below the editing pane) and choose Copy Link Location. Then paste that into your post and surround it with [img]...[/img] tags.
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Re: Simplified "Stoic" Sagittal for 13-limit tonality diamond use

Post by cmloegcmluin »

So the Stoics were indeed alternative Athenians. :)
That's amazing.

I've been quiet here but following along. I really love how this has been coming together.
Dave Keenan wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 10:05 am I also meant to tell you that I've been fixing up your attempts to display your attached images. Unfortunately, it doesn't work if you simply copy the attachment's file name and surround it with [img]...[/img] tags. What you need to do is right-click on the filename in the Attachments tab (below the editing pane) and choose Copy Link Location. Then paste that into your post and surround it with [img]...[/img] tags.
Dave did that for me at first too @ndentonprotsack :)

I guess this is the place where we publicly explain that trick, but it's not super easy to find...

That whole subforum, for Administrative, forum or website issues is a trove of tips and tricks for making the Sagittal forum do the cool stuff you want it to do, by the way.

But the biggest trick that will serve you over any other trick — in case you didn't know it already — is the quote button, in the top right of any post, next to the heart button. Click that, and you'll be able to see what tricks anyone used in their post, so you can reverse-engineer anything you like.
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