bugUnifont - Bugs: bug #51424, Wrong glyphs for more Byzantine...

 
 

bug #51424: Wrong glyphs for more Byzantine musical symbols

Submitted by:  David Corbett <dscorbett>
Submitted on:  Sun 09 Jul 2017 04:10:25 AM UTC  
 
Category: NoneSeverity: 3 - Normal
Item Group: NoneStatus: Postponed
Privacy: PublicAssigned to: None
Open/Closed: Open

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Sat 07 Oct 2017 10:53:33 PM UTC, comment #4:

David,

I was finally able to meet with the Byzantine chant expert I wanted to see. He pointed out to me several symbols in modern Byzantine chant notation that do not exist in the Unicode block, so what is there now can only be used to record symbols in earlier Byzantine music (before the 19th century reforms).

However, Unicode itself does not contain sufficient encoding information to indicate the arrangement of the Byzantine chant symbols in relation to each other. This is mentioned explicitly on p. 3 of http://unicode.org/notes/tn20/byznotation.1.1.pdf: "...the challenges of correctly positioning neumes are beyond the scope of what Unicode is intended to cope with, and should be relegated to a higher level protocol."

This is in addition to the limitations of Unifont.

So I think the best that Unifont can hope for is just to represent each glyph in isolation for illustration purposes. It will take someone familiar with Byzantine chant to create a meaningful arrangement of those glyphs, and that will have to take place outside the current confines of Unicode.

I am going to look at this more in the future to see if there is hope for encoding of symbol arrangement information in Unicode. I understand music theory but at this point only know the rudimentary basics of reading Byzantine chant notation, so such an effort will be long-term.

In the meantime, I will make the changes that you have suggested for what Unifont contains now.

Thank you,

Paul Hardy

Paul Hardy <unifoundry>
Project Administrator
Sat 30 Sep 2017 05:11:03 PM UTC, comment #3:

I am going to meet with an expert in Byzantine music notation this weekend. This will only be the start of what will probably be a very long process. Apparently what is currently in Unicode does not include enough for modern notation.

Paul Hardy <unifoundry>
Project Administrator
Sun 09 Jul 2017 09:14:30 PM UTC, comment #2:

I can change a glyph back to what Unifont 10.0.03 had quickly and postpone the rest of it.

This block is something I have wanted to redraw better but have not had the time even to learn how the various glyphs are combined. In an effort to understand the historical glyphs, about half a year ago I bought a copy of A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography by Egon Wellesz, Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 1962. It is a little over 400 pages long. That is something I can absorb over the next year.

So I think postponing the Byzantine Musical Symbols work until I have an understanding of how the symbols are used would give better long term results--and I don't want to redraw glyphs repeatedly if it can be avoided.

Paul Hardy

Paul Hardy <unifoundry>
Project Administrator
Sun 09 Jul 2017 05:19:28 AM UTC, comment #1:

David,

I will probably postpone this until I can get together with the scholar that I know in this subject area. He is at a university, and should have a lighter teaching schedule during the summer so I might be able to review this entire script with him by the end of the summer. I realize that the whole script will have to work together as a whole and it is more challenging to accomplish that remotely. I have also been told that there are glyphs missing from this script, and that a large number of the glyphs are not in modern use. But I have not had time to pursue this further yet.

Paul Hardy

Paul Hardy <unifoundry>
Project Administrator
Sun 09 Jul 2017 04:10:25 AM UTC, original submission:

In Unifont Upper 10.0.04, U+1D084 BYZANTINE MUSICAL SYMBOL APODERMA NEO looks like a gorgon. It should look as it did in version 10.0.03.

The glyphs of U+1D08F BYZANTINE MUSICAL SYMBOL GORGON NEO ANO and U+1D0F5 BYZANTINE MUSICAL SYMBOL GORGON NEO KATO, while not wrong per se, are inconsistent with the other gorgon-like characters U+1D090–U+1D09D and U+1D09F–U+1D0A1. That is U+1D08F should look like U+1D090 or U+1D091 without the dot.

Once U+1D08F is corrected, U+1D08E BYZANTINE MUSICAL SYMBOL LEIMMA IMISEOS CHRONOU should look like U+1D08A with U+1D08F above the dot.

Unlike the other symbols in this block, the pelastikon and gorthmikon (U+1D0B4 BYZANTINE MUSICAL SYMBOL GORTHMIKON N APLOUN and U+1D0B5 BYZANTINE MUSICAL SYMBOL GORTHMIKON N DIPLOUN) are used inline with the lyrics below the score. They represent epenthetic nu. They are meant to harmonize with Greek letters, so they should be bigger and be raised. I suggest:

01D0B4:000000003C4242422204040404020000
01D0B5:00000000404040404048484848360000

David Corbett <dscorbett>

 

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    Follows 1 latest change.

    Date Changed By Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced By
    Wed 12 Jul 2017 11:32:54 AM UTCunifoundryStatusNone=>Postponed

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