Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning lost in the tuning forest, where every path is a tuning fork ...

Hi all,

After struggling for a little while, I'm sure that others may have had
similar experiences.

So I'm moved to add a new FAQ page to the tuning wiki, with its first
questions being perhaps:

1. What are alternate tunings?
2. Why use alternate tunings?
3. What is the history of alternate tunings?
4. How can we notate music in alternate tunings?
5. Where can I hear some of this music?

Of course, each of these questions, being open-ended, should invite many
answers! Then we can progress to some closed questions, such as:
6. What is a comma?
7. What is Sagittal notation?
8. What is Scala?
9. What is FTS?
10. How can I retune my instrument?
and so on ...

Each question will lead to a new page, where, I hope, members better
informed than I, will contribute at least one answer, and maybe more.

I'll add the new page shortly, and would welcome your input.

Regards,
Yahya
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🔗Yahya Abdal-Aziz <yahya@melbpc.org.au>

🔗George D. Secor <gdsecor@yahoo.com>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Yahya Abdal-Aziz" <yahya@m...> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> After struggling for a little while, I'm sure that others may have
had
> similar experiences.
>
> So I'm moved to add a new FAQ page to the tuning wiki, with its
first
> questions being perhaps:
>
> 1. What are alternate tunings?
> 2. Why use alternate tunings?
> 3. What is the history of alternate tunings?
> 4. How can we notate music in alternate tunings?
> 5. Where can I hear some of this music?
>
> Of course, each of these questions, being open-ended, should invite
many
> answers! Then we can progress to some closed questions, such as:
> 6. What is a comma?
> 7. What is Sagittal notation?
> 8. What is Scala?
> 9. What is FTS?
> 10. How can I retune my instrument?
> and so on ...

You'll find answers to questions #1 thru #4 here:
http://dkeenan.com/sagittal/gift/GiftOfTheGods.htm

As you read, you'll also discover that the above link gets you
started with #5. There are also some examples of #6 (though not a
formal definition) and, of course, quite a bit about #7. On the home
page there are also links to #8 and #9. (For #10 you'll have to look
elsewhere; sorry!)

--George

🔗alternativetuning <alternativetuning@yahoo.com>

🔗Carl Lumma <ekin@lumma.org>

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@svpal.org>

🔗Danny Wier <dawiertx@sbcglobal.net>

Oh, I think Unicode support is still iffy for a lot of users. It's no problem for Windows XP/2000 and the latest Mac OS, as long as it's limited to the first 16 bits (the BMP, or Plane 0) and doesn't go into any other Planes. There actually is a Unicode standard for Western musical notation, which has only a few microtonal symbols. Not even the slashed or reversed flat or the half-sharp used in Arabic music. (Stay tuned for my question about this, folks.)

And the fonts are not all the same for all operating systems, and the most common ones aren't that complete. Lucida Sans Unicode has IPA symbols, most of Cyrillic and Hebrew, but not Arabic or Chinese characters. Arial Unicode MS, which does have Arabic, Chinese and Indic support along with a lot of miscellaneous symbols, is available with MS Office and its components (at least Word), but not everybody has that font, and it's huge anyway, 22.5 MB in fact. Mac and Linux users would have different fonts.

I personally dislike sending HTML to e-mail groups unless necessary, and I try and always put a warning in the Subject: line if I do so.

For right now, I'd limit the symbols to ASCII, or at least Latin-1 (adding 160-255 dec/A0-FF hex to ASCII, but not 128-159 dec/80-9F hex). If you want to go any further, concentrate on WGL4, which a lot of stock fonts are able to work with. (WGL4 includes ASCII, Latin-1, Latin Extended-A, a few Extended-B and Additional characters, Greek, the main part of Cyrillic, and the most important punctuation, currency and mathematical symbols. And I can't even vouch for Mac or *nix compatibility since I only use Windows.

~Danny~

----- Original Message ----- From: Yahya Abdal-Aziz
To: Tuning group at yahoo
Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 4:38 AM
Subject: [tuning] ASCII or Unicode?

Hi all,

This message is sent to you as HTML, using the Lucida Sans Unicode
font. Of course, how it will appear on Yahoo!groups is another matter ...

Unicode offers so many more character possibilities than ASCII, it's
a natural for any notation system that requires a modern standard
character set with some flexibility for user-defined characters, using
the fewest necessary symbols.

If you haven't yet realised the scope of Unicode, may I suggest you
instal a font like this one and browse the character set.

Regards,
Yahya

🔗Yahya Abdal-Aziz <yahya@melbpc.org.au>

George,

You wrote:

________________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 18:33:42 -0000
From: "George D. Secor" <gdsecor@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Yahya Abdal-Aziz" <yahya@m...> wrote:
...
> So I'm moved to add a new FAQ page to the tuning wiki, with its
first
> questions being perhaps:
>
> 1. What are alternate tunings?
> 2. Why use alternate tunings?
> 3. What is the history of alternate tunings?
> 4. How can we notate music in alternate tunings?
> 5. Where can I hear some of this music?
>
> Of course, each of these questions, being open-ended, should invite
many
> answers! Then we can progress to some closed questions, such as:
> 6. What is a comma?
> 7. What is Sagittal notation?
> 8. What is Scala?
> 9. What is FTS?
> 10. How can I retune my instrument?
> and so on ...

You'll find answers to questions #1 thru #4 here:
http://dkeenan.com/sagittal/gift/GiftOfTheGods.htm

Thank you for your reply.

Well, a few weeks back, I spent an entertaining hour or so reading
your very witty history of Sagittal, George, at the link you gave
above. But did you intend it to be a _direct_ answer to this sort of
question? You may gather from my recent messages that I do already
have an inkling about some of these matters, and I wasn't really
thinking so much of myself as of tuning neophytes who might be
attracted to the wiki - for example by a well-placed link or two on
wikipedia. I guess it's the teacher in me coming out ... :-) I was rather
hoping that other members would consider editing a page or two on
the tuning wiki, thus giving a more gently-paced intro to the arcane
world of alternate tunings.

As regards question #5, I have certainly enjoyed the music on the
Gift of the Gods pages: the piece in 19-et feels especially "different"
yet also especially "right".

Regards,
Yahya

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Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.9.13 - Release Date: 16/4/05

🔗Yahya Abdal-Aziz <yahya@melbpc.org.au>

Danny,

I've replied to your message inline.

BTW, I use the US-International keyboard setup in Windows XP,
which makes it very easy to type almost any accented European
character - especially useful for when I'm writing Spanish, French
or German.

Regards,
Yahya

Original message:
________________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 16:33:46 -0500
From: "Danny Wier" <dawiertx@...>
Subject: Re: ASCII or Unicode?

Oh, I think Unicode support is still iffy for a lot of users. It's no
problem for Windows XP/2000 and the latest Mac OS, as long as it's limited
to the first 16 bits (the BMP, or Plane 0) and doesn't go into any other
Planes. There actually is a Unicode standard for Western musical notation,
which has only a few microtonal symbols. Not even the slashed or reversed
flat or the half-sharp used in Arabic music. (Stay tuned for my question
about this, folks.)

And the fonts are not all the same for all operating systems, and the most
common ones aren't that complete. Lucida Sans Unicode has IPA symbols, most
of Cyrillic and Hebrew, but not Arabic or Chinese characters. Arial Unicode
MS, which does have Arabic, Chinese and Indic support along with a lot of
miscellaneous symbols, is available with MS Office and its components (at
least Word),

[YA] Thanks for this information! I probably have it installed, since I
have
Windows XP with Office 2000 and English, Spanish and Chinese support.
Come to think of it, I _must_ have used Arial Unicode MS for Arabic.

but not everybody has that font, and it's huge anyway, 22.5 MB in fact.

[YA] Is this really such a problem? Do you know anyone who's using a hard
drive less than 1 GB today?

Mac and Linux users would have different fonts.

[YA] I understand that Mac users on OS-X would have a version of Office
available that's almost indistinguishable from that on Windows XP.

I personally dislike sending HTML to e-mail groups unless necessary, and I
try and always put a warning in the Subject: line if I do so.

[YA] Why is that? Who doesn't read HTML every time they load a web
page? HTML itself is very undemanding, providing its use is limited to
matters of emphasis, paragraph formatting and table layout.

For right now, I'd limit the symbols to ASCII, or at least Latin-1 (adding
160-255 dec/A0-FF hex to ASCII, but not 128-159 dec/80-9F hex). If you want
to go any further, concentrate on WGL4, which a lot of stock fonts are able
to work with. (WGL4 includes ASCII, Latin-1, Latin Extended-A, a few
Extended-B and Additional characters, Greek, the main part of Cyrillic, and
the most important punctuation, currency and mathematical symbols. And I
can't even vouch for Mac or *nix compatibility since I only use Windows.

~Danny~

----- Original Message -----
From: Yahya Abdal-Aziz
To: Tuning group at yahoo
Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 4:38 AM
Subject: [tuning] ASCII or Unicode?

Hi all,

This message is sent to you as HTML, using the Lucida Sans Unicode
font. Of course, how it will appear on Yahoo!groups is another matter ...

If you haven't yet realised the scope of Unicode, may I suggest you
instal a font like this one and browse the character set.

Regards,
Yahya

________________________________________________________________________

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.9.13 - Release Date: 16/4/05

🔗Danny Wier <dawiertx@sbcglobal.net>

Yahya Abdal-Aziz wrote:

> BTW, I use the US-International keyboard setup in Windows XP,
> which makes it very easy to type almost any accented European
> character - especially useful for when I'm writing Spanish, French
> or German.

[Sorry for the late reply; been busy or not feeling well lately....]

So do I. Using US-International, one can easily type almost anything in Latin-1, so using that character set as a basis for notation for short-form sagittal or anything else is far more convenient than having to open up Character Map.

(I also modify my own layouts using MS Keyboard Layout Creator, so I can have US-International with Turkish support, for example.)

> [YA] Why is that? Who doesn't read HTML every time they load a web
> page? HTML itself is very undemanding, providing its use is limited to
> matters of emphasis, paragraph formatting and table layout.

Just a few years ago there were many lists that wouldn't let anyone send mail in anything but plain-text; there were bandwidth issues. This might not be the case anymore, but I know there are a few out there that only have access to older, less powerful systems and slower connections. And e-mail is different than the Web.

It's also still considered proper netiquette to limit HTML use in e-mail, if I'm not mistaken.

~Danny~

🔗Graham Breed <gbreed@gmail.com>

Danny Wier wrote:

> So do I. Using US-International, one can easily type almost anything in > Latin-1, so using that character set as a basis for notation for short-form > sagittal or anything else is far more convenient than having to open up > Character Map.

I use that when I need it, but not by default because it's a pain to get quotes an apostrophes. Do you, er, know how to use it? There's no documentation I can find for the actual layout. I know in Linux hitting the ' key twice did the trick, but not in Windows. Oh, I get it, you hit space after the quote. How I'm learning!

I still don't know how to get a pound sign, though. That is, a real pound sign.

Is even Latin-1 ubiquitous? I don't think my mobile phone supports it, for example. Just for the hell of it, I decided to find out which Unicode characters from 128 to 255 Python can convert to GB2312. They happen to be:

164 167 168 176 177 215 224 225 232 233 234 236 237 242 243 247 249 250 252

Keeping to ASCII is still the safest option, where it's appropriate. Beyond that, I tend to think anything smart enough to recognize the encoding should work with UTF-8. Looking to the future, can't we assume this kind of thing will become more and more transparent?

On my machine, at least, I have three kinds of fonts:

1) 8 bit ones, which look like Latin-1 where they're a superset of ASCII.

2) Some marked with an O. Don't know what it stands for. All of those that do latin characters also have Greek and Cyrillic except for Kartika (which does Malayalam) and Vrinda (which does Bengali). A few of them do Hebrew, Arabic and characters like ♪ and ♫.

3) TrueType fonts, which have a huge character set, and I don't really want to check what's missing.

Most applications magically work with any character I throw at them. So am I atypically internationalized? I seem to have Windows XP Professional with Word 2000.

> (I also modify my own layouts using MS Keyboard Layout Creator, so I can > have US-International with Turkish support, for example.)

Oh, cool! How does that work?

> Just a few years ago there were many lists that wouldn't let anyone send > mail in anything but plain-text; there were bandwidth issues. This might not > be the case anymore, but I know there are a few out there that only have > access to older, less powerful systems and slower connections. And e-mail is > different than the Web.

There are a load of spammer tricks associated with HTML e-mail. You can add web bugs, and format it to get round or confuse filters. A lot of worms manipulate bugs in it. Frankly, the best option's to treat any HTML email from a stranger as spam. So it shouldn't be allowed in mailing lists. The difference with websites is at least you choose to visit them.

Also -- although maybe the technology's improved here -- HTML never used to work in digests. The MIME type has to be consistent for the whole message.

All of which is orthogonal to the character set. I've declared this message to be UTF-8, so anything from français to 中文 should work. Let's see how it comes out! I expect it'll still cause trouble with digests, at least.

> It's also still considered proper netiquette to limit HTML use in e-mail, if > I'm not mistaken.

It really depends on who you're writing to. Where you don't need to worry about bandwidth, the best thing is to include both plain text and HTML, which is common. Then it's up to the client whether to render the HTML. I notice mine sticks to plain text, which is good. I'm not sure when I told it that...

Graham

🔗George D. Secor <gdsecor@yahoo.com>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Yahya Abdal-Aziz" <yahya@m...> wrote:
>
> George,
>
> You wrote:
>
> > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Yahya Abdal-Aziz" <yahya@m...>
wrote:
> > ...
> > > So I'm moved to add a new FAQ page to the tuning wiki, with its
first
> > > questions being perhaps:
> > >
> > > 1. What are alternate tunings?
> > > 2. Why use alternate tunings?
> > > ... and so on ...
> >
> > You'll find answers ... here:
> >
http://dkeenan.com/sagittal/gift/GiftOfTheGods.htm
> > ...
>
> Thank you for your reply.
>
> Well, a few weeks back, I spent an entertaining hour or so reading
> your very witty history of Sagittal, George, at the link you gave
> above. But did you intend it to be a _direct_ answer to this sort
of
> question?

Yes, indeed! The mythology was intended to be a resource for
microtonal composers who wish to use Sagittal notation for live
preformance and who would want a gentle tutorial for musicians with
no previous background in microtonality or alternate tunings (the
term appearing in the name of this Yahoo! group).

Realizing that this tutorial may very well be the first thing of real
substance that these individuals may read about this subject, we
wanted to make that introduction a positive experience that would be
not only educational, but also entertaining. We also wanted our
tutorial to answer some basic questions that such individuals might
ask, so that they would have a better idea of what they've been asked
to get involved in. Hopefully, we will awaken within them the same
spirit of adventure that has taken us off the beaten path so that
they may come to share our enthusiasm for the *extraordinary* (how
much better a word than "unconventional"!).

> You may gather from my recent messages that I do already
> have an inkling about some of these matters, and I wasn't really
> thinking so much of myself as of tuning neophytes who might be
> attracted to the wiki - for example by a well-placed link or two on
> wikipedia. I guess it's the teacher in me coming out ... :-) I
was rather
> hoping that other members would consider editing a page or two on
> the tuning wiki, thus giving a more gently-paced intro to the arcane
> world of alternate tunings.

You're welcome to place a link to the mythology, if you like. You
noticed that, unfortunately, it still isn't finished -- Dave Keenan
and I already have so many irons in the fire that we have to be
highly selective about how to spend our time and energy. We've
already made our best effort in the introduction to the mythology to
give a rationale for alternate tunings and our notation (both on an
historical and acoustical level), and there are other things that are
now more pressing (Episode 3 being near the top of the list).

> As regards question #5, I have certainly enjoyed the music on the
> Gift of the Gods pages: the piece in 19-et feels
especially "different"
> yet also especially "right".

Thank you. Those four recordings are nearly 30 years old, predating
both the personal computer and MIDI. The 19-ET piece that plays on
the Sagittal homepage was composed by Ivor Darreg (Prelude No. 1 for
guitar) and performed by me on the Scalatron with generalized
keyboard:

http://dkeenan.com/sagittal/

--George

🔗Yahya Abdal-Aziz <yahya@melbpc.org.au>

Danny,

You replied as below. My responses appear inline,
after the tag [YA].

Regards,
Yahya

-----Original Message-----
________________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 03:31:01 -0500
From: "Danny Wier" <dawiertx@...>
Subject: Re: RE: ASCII or Unicode?

Yahya Abdal-Aziz wrote:

[Sorry for the late reply; been busy or not feeling well lately....]

[YA] Sorry to hear you've been unwell; gladto hear you've been
busy!

So do I. Using US-International, one can easily type almost anything in
Latin-1, so using that character set as a basis for notation for short-form
sagittal or anything else is far more convenient than having to open up
Character Map.
[YA] Agree 100%.

(I also modify my own layouts using MS Keyboard Layout Creator, so I can
have US-International with Turkish support, for example.)
[YA] Aha! That perhaps explains why I couldn't easily type the
first letter of Ertugrul's surname; I'm using the standard
US-International.

Just a few years ago there were many lists that wouldn't let anyone send
mail in anything but plain-text; there were bandwidth issues. This might not
be the case anymore, but I know there are a few out there that only have
access to older, less powerful systems and slower connections.

[YA] Tell me about it ... :-)

And e-mail is different than the Web.

[YA] Good point. Since I use the same suppliers for both, it's a point
I sometimes forget. Tho the bandwidth offered for both by the same ISP
tends to correlate highly - they both increase with the amount of money
you spend.

It's also still considered proper netiquette to limit HTML use in e-mail, if
I'm not mistaken.

[YA] I wouldn't know. Most of my business email, with colleagues,
customers and suppliers, is usually in html format. That's what they use,
and what they expect. Most of my email to mailing lists is in plain text,
since I'm usually replying to plain text digests and don't see the point
in using HTML formatting if it will only get lost in translation. But my
default output format for mail in Outlook is HTML.
_______________________________________________________________________

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No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
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🔗Danny Wier <dawiertx@sbcglobal.net>

(Since this is OT, I'm only answering this briefly.)

Graham Breed wrote:

> I use that when I need it, but not by default because it's a pain to get
> quotes an apostrophes. Do you, er, know how to use it? There's no
> documentation I can find for the actual layout. I know in Linux hitting
> the ' key twice did the trick, but not in Windows. Oh, I get it, you
> hit space after the quote. How I'm learning!

The apostrophe and straight quotes are dead keys for acute accent and diaeresis (umlaut), so typing ' then a gives you á, while typing " then a gives you ä. For the apostrophe and quotes, type '/" then space.

The grave accent (`) and tilde (~) are also dead keys, and typing AltGr (the Alt key on the right) and another character gives you something in Latin-1 (Euro and the 6 and 9-shaped single quotes are also in US-International).

> I still don't know how to get a pound sign, though. That is, a real
> pound sign.

British pound sterling (£) is AltGr-Shift-4, and Euro (€) is AltGr-5.

> 2) Some marked with an O. Don't know what it stands for. All of those
> that do latin characters also have Greek and Cyrillic except for Kartika
> (which does Malayalam) and Vrinda (which does Bengali). A few of them
> do Hebrew, Arabic and characters like ♪ and ♫.

OpenType fonts. You have to be using Win XP/2000 or Mac OS-X, to be able to use all their features. (And Kartika and Vrinda are the most recent additions in SP2.)

> Most applications magically work with any character I throw at them. So
> am I atypically internationalized? I seem to have Windows XP
> Professional with Word 2000.

That's a major point of XP: being able to handle text in as many languages as possible.

>> (I also modify my own layouts using MS Keyboard Layout Creator, so I can
>> have US-International with Turkish support, for example.)
>
> Oh, cool! How does that work?

Go here: http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/msklc.mspx (make sure you have .NET Framework v1.0/1.1).

> All of which is orthogonal to the character set. I've declared this
> message to be UTF-8, so anything from français to 中文 should work.
> Let's see how it comes out! I expect it'll still cause trouble with
> digests, at least.

I was wondering if UTF-8 is safe for this list in plain text; I wanted to post some text with اللغة العربية but wanted to make sure it was okay. (I'm trying to learn that along with русский язык and español.).

~Danny~

🔗Herman Miller <hmiller@IO.COM>

Danny Wier wrote:

> I was wondering if UTF-8 is safe for this list in plain text; I wanted to > post some text with اللغة العربية but wanted to make sure it was okay. (I'm > trying to learn that along with русский язык and español.).

It looks fine from here, but then I'm using Mozilla as my e-mail reader. Possibly of more interest to the list would be whether ♭ ♮ ♯ are transmitted and displayed correctly. I can't seem to get a double sharp to show up at all. 𝄪 𝄪 𝄪 (all I see is question marks). Well, just try to find a font that includes a double sharp character, or any character that's not in the BMP. There aren't many of them out there....

Of course, "b" is a workable substitute for flat and "#" for sharp, but there isn't an obvious equivalent for "natural" (♮).

It would be nice to be able to use φ to represent the golden ratio for values like (2φ + 1) / (5φ + 2) (the generator of Kornerup's golden meantone). I'm sure many other uses could be mentioned that would take advantage of commonly available Unicode characters. But no doubt there are still some older mail readers that can't read them....

And that's the first I've ever seen Arabic in a mono-spaced font! I didn't imagine that there was such a thing.... (Of course, that will depend on the setting of your mail program, but I have it set to a fixed space font so that things like tables and lattice diagrams will display correctly....)

🔗Danny Wier <dawiertx@sbcglobal.net>

Herman Miller wrote:

> Danny Wier wrote:
>
>> I was wondering if UTF-8 is safe for this list in plain text; I wanted to
>> post some text with اللغة العربية but wanted to make sure it was okay. >> (I'm
>> trying to learn that along with русский язык and español.).
>
> It looks fine from here, but then I'm using Mozilla as my e-mail reader.
> Possibly of more interest to the list would be whether ♭ ♮ ♯ are
> transmitted and displayed correctly. I can't seem to get a double sharp
> to show up at all. 𝄪 𝄪 𝄪 (all I see is question marks). Well, just
> try to find a font that includes a double sharp character, or any
> character that's not in the BMP. There aren't many of them out there....

I know of one that claims to include some supplementary plane characters, and Musical Symbols are named: Code2001 (http://home.att.net/~jameskass/code2001.htm).

Unfortunately, Outlook Express only works in UTF-7 and UTF-8, so anything outside BMP is out of the question. (But that font *does* include Tengwar and Cirth in Private Area if you're interested....)

> Of course, "b" is a workable substitute for flat and "#" for sharp, but
> there isn't an obvious equivalent for "natural" (♮).

I'll brainstorm here. Or has someone already come up with something better?

* H: isn't the natural symbol derived from the letter H anyway? This might be confused with B-natural in German usage though.
* þ: lowercase Icelandic/Old English thorn), but that's Latin-1. For those who don't have it on their keyboard, Alt-0254.
* n: which I don't like much on second thought, and it's a sagittal substitute anyway. I also use it for a neutral interval/chord.

> It would be nice to be able to use φ to represent the golden ratio for
> values like (2φ + 1) / (5φ + 2) (the generator of Kornerup's golden
> meantone). I'm sure many other uses could be mentioned that would take
> advantage of commonly available Unicode characters. But no doubt there
> are still some older mail readers that can't read them....

(Somebody thought *I* invented golden meantone instead of Kornerup! I did come up with it on my own, but I was a few hundred years late.)

LucyTuning would need the character π (pi), and anything using natural logarithms and exponents need ℯ (of course you could just type 'e' and make it Italic). And this interests me because an 87-tone "Pythagorean" using pi as period and e as generator is virtually 53-EDO with the octave stretched by 2.24523 cents.

> And that's the first I've ever seen Arabic in a mono-spaced font! I
> didn't imagine that there was such a thing.... (Of course, that will
> depend on the setting of your mail program, but I have it set to a fixed
> space font so that things like tables and lattice diagrams will display
> correctly....)

It's weird with Courier New, because even though it's monospaced, it forms ligatures (besides lam-alif and Allah, which are required in all fonts). Simplified Arabic Fixed doesn't do that.

I view Unicode e-mail with Arial Unicode MS, which is not monospaced.

🔗Graham Breed <gbreed@gmail.com>

Danny Wier wrote:

> I know of one that claims to include some supplementary plane characters, > and Musical Symbols are named: Code2001 > (http://home.att.net/~jameskass/code2001.htm).

I can't get at that link. This one

http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Fonts.html#Plane1Plus

seems to say only 44 out of 219 musical symbols are supported.

> Unfortunately, Outlook Express only works in UTF-7 and UTF-8, so anything > outside BMP is out of the question. (But that font *does* include Tengwar > and Cirth in Private Area if you're interested....)

Do you mean it doesn't support any other Unicode encodings? Even if so, UTF-8 is *not* restricted to the BMP.

There's no point in using the private area, because if you're going to require a specific font it may as well be the Sagittal one. Unless you've been looking for a Tengwar font all these years.

>>Of course, "b" is a workable substitute for flat and "#" for sharp, but
>>there isn't an obvious equivalent for "natural" (♮).
> > > I'll brainstorm here. Or has someone already come up with something better?
> > * H: isn't the natural symbol derived from the letter H anyway? This might > be confused with B-natural in German usage though.
> * þ: lowercase Icelandic/Old English thorn), but that's Latin-1. For those > who don't have it on their keyboard, Alt-0254.
> * n: which I don't like much on second thought, and it's a sagittal > substitute anyway. I also use it for a neutral interval/chord.

If b isn't confusable with B, neither should h be with H. Otherwise, how about q?

Graham

🔗Herman Miller <hmiller@IO.COM>

Graham Breed wrote:

> Danny Wier wrote:
> > >>I know of one that claims to include some supplementary plane characters, >>and Musical Symbols are named: Code2001 >>(http://home.att.net/~jameskass/code2001.htm).
> > > I can't get at that link. This one
> > http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Fonts.html#Plane1Plus
> > seems to say only 44 out of 219 musical symbols are supported.

I just downloaded the latest version to see what it has. Oddly enough, it has the double flat but not the double sharp. And the double flat is a small subscript which doesn't look good next to a capital letter. But it does have some of the accidentals with attached arrows, if anyone has a need for those.

> There's no point in using the private area, because if you're going to > require a specific font it may as well be the Sagittal one. Unless > you've been looking for a Tengwar font all these years.

On the other hand, it would be nice to have a single font with both the alphabet and the accidentals all in one font, to avoid having to switch fonts every time you want to display accidentals. The supplementary private use area isn't of much use, since most software doesn't yet support it, but the regular private use area in the BMP could be of use for accidental fonts.

>>>Of course, "b" is a workable substitute for flat and "#" for sharp, but
>>>there isn't an obvious equivalent for "natural" (♮).
>>
>>
>>I'll brainstorm here. Or has someone already come up with something better?
>>
>>* H: isn't the natural symbol derived from the letter H anyway? This might >>be confused with B-natural in German usage though.
>>* þ: lowercase Icelandic/Old English thorn), but that's Latin-1. For those >>who don't have it on their keyboard, Alt-0254.
>>* n: which I don't like much on second thought, and it's a sagittal >>substitute anyway. I also use it for a neutral interval/chord.
> > > If b isn't confusable with B, neither should h be with H. Otherwise, > how about q?

I've used h for semiflats, though, and ASCII Sagittal notation uses it to represent 4131/4096; it's not obvious out of context what "h" might represent. But until Unicode is more widespread in email programs, I'm guessing that it's probably still too early to start using ♮ and expect it to be seen as the natural symbol. Is that a good guess?

🔗Dave Keenan <d.keenan@bigpond.net.au>

The single ASCII characters used for sagittals are shown at
http://dkeenan.com/sagittal/map/index.htm#mid

At Robert Walker's request, we've tentatively standardised single
symbols for the other 13 pairs by using special characters from "8-bit
ASCII", i.e. ISO Latin-1 (ISO 8859-1), the first 256 characters of
Unicode.

It was quite a struggle to get 13 pairs since most of the characters
in this region are letters with diacritical marks (accents), and I
didn't want to use any of them lest they be confused with sagittal
accents applied to existing symbols.

long short short
up up down description
--------------------------------------------------------------------
)~| ¡ ¦ inverted exclamation mark, broken bar
~~| ¶ § paragraph sign, section sign
)|~ ¯ ÷ macron, divide sign
)|) þ ß lowercase thorn (iceland), lowercase sz ligature
~|) ç ¿ lowercase c cedilla, inverted question mark
/|~ ø ð lowercase o slash, lowercase eth (iceland)
~|\ µ £ lowercase mu, pound sterling
|~) ¬ ¢ not sign, cents
|~\ ¥ ± yen, plus or minus
(|~ ª æ female ordinal, lowercase ae ligature
|\) ° ¤ degree sign, general currency sign
|\\ » « right angle-quote, left angle-quote
((| ® © registered, copyright

If you don't see all the characters in the second and third columns
above, matching their descriptions in the fourth column, let us know.

Here are their decimal character codes.

long short short
up up down description
--------------------------------------------------------------------
)~| 161 166 inverted exclamation mark, broken bar
~~| 182 167 paragraph sign, section sign
)|~ 175 247 macron, divide sign
)|) 254 223 lowercase thorn (iceland), lowercase sz ligature
~|) 231 191 lowercase c cedilla, inverted question mark
/|~ 248 240 lowercase o slash, lowercase eth (iceland)
~|\ 181 163 lowercase mu, pound sterling
|~) 172 162 not sign, cents
|~\ 165 177 yen, plus or minus
(|~ 170 230 female ordinal, lowercase ae ligature
|\) 176 164 degree sign, general currency sign
|\\ 187 171 right angle-quote, left angle-quote
((| 174 169 registered, copyright

-- Dave Keenan