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Doulos SIL Cipher

Cipher Music Notation font

Lorna Priest Evans, 2013-04-08; 3529 reads

Introduction

The Cipher music notation is used throughout Indonesia and China for all kinds of music. The font is not intended for general orthographic use, although it is usable for song lyrics in simple Roman writing systems. This solution is primarily intended for fairly straightforward songbooks for singers, not for complex instrumental music. It can handle harmony lines fine, but not a lot of intricacies or subtleties (e.g. no staccato).

If you use this font for developing songbooks and you have suggestions for improvements we would like to hear back from you. Contact information is in the README.txt file in the font package.

Cipher Music Notation Requirements

The main requirements for this font were to support the Indonesian Cipher Music Notation (Kepatihan). However, where it was straightforward to add support for the Chinese jianpu style, we have done so.

All of the characters documented above (not including combining marks) are either of "full" width or "half" width. This allows for the font to use the proper width of the overlines or underlines. In addition, regular orthographic characters are provided for use in lyrics. Lyrics characters have proportional widths. As long as you don't mix in other characters, you should therefore be able to align harmony lines with the melody line by adding spaces (which are "half" width) appropriately. Because lyrics characters have proportional widths they cannot be precisely aligned unless you use tabs, but this is generally less important.

Semua tanda yang tercantum di atas, lebarnya "lengkap" atau "setengah". Sepanjang Anda tidak mencampurkan tanda/huruf lain, maka Anda dapat memantapkan baris-baris harmonis dengan baris melodi, dengan menambahkan jarak / spasi (yang adalah "setengah" lebarnya). Huruf-huruf lirik mempunyai lebar yang proporsional dan tidak dapat dengan tepat dipaskan jika Anda tidak menggunakan tabs, namun biasanya ini kurang penting.

Keyboarding

An InKey keyboard is available that enables cipher music to be typed without blocking the normal behavior of most keys on an English keyboard. It uses a rota system to allow multiple characters to be assigned to their most intuitive keystroke. InKey is a new product (it's free but still has some quirks). It is available here:  http://inkeysoftware.com/.

We are also considering creating a keyboard using MSKLC, which would be free, less quirky, and provided as one installer rather than two. But MSK keyboards are quite dependent on deadkeys (no user-friendly rotas). Another option would be to provide a Keyman keyboard (but Keyman is not free).

Font

Rendering

This font makes use of Graphite and OpenType smart font technologies. At this time, there is no support for the Slurs in OpenType applications.

Features

This font has a feature for choosing between above (Chinese jianpu) and below (Indonesian kepatihan) slurs. There is also an edit mode which has tiny slur tips rather than the slur. This mode allows for easier editing between the beginning and ending of the slur.

The default position for the slurs is below.

In Worldpad and FieldWorks applications you can select your text, go to Format / Font. Choose "Doulos SIL Cipher". Select  Font Features...  and then Above or Below Slurs. Select the option you want. The choices are:

• Edit Mode (Tiny Tips) (value=0)
• Indonesian (Below) (value=1)
• Chinese (Above) (value=2)

You can also use these features in LibreOffice. The way you select feature behavior is different. To turn on the "Chinese (Above)" feature, select your font "Doulos SIL Cipher". Then after the font add ":slur=2". Your font selection should look like this: "Doulos SIL Cipher:slur=2". The digit "2" is the value which is documented in the above list.

Slurs will display as slurs for up to 7 base characters. It might be less than that if there are many dots, fermata, and over- or under-lines. Once the slurs "fail" they default to small beginning and ending marks under the base characters.

Application Support

Graphite

Any Graphite-enabled application will be able to use the Graphite capabilities in the font. Doulos SIL Cipher has been tested on Windows 7 to work with the following applications:

• WorldPad
•  LibreOffice 3.4.4+
•  OpenOffice 3.2+
• Mozilla Firefox (with Graphite enabled)

The font was also minimally tested on Ubuntu using LibreOffice and Firefox.

OpenType

This font has minimal OpenType support. There is no support for the slurs. There is support for the combining marks. However, many Windows applications do not support combining marks on spaces, punctuation or numbers — all of which are used in Cipher Notation! In addition, Windows applications do not support the use of combining marks from the BMP in combination with base characters from the SMP (the breathing mark is in the SMP).

Below is a short list of behavior in some applications:

• Notepad and Internet Explorer 9 — slurs do not display, combining marks on SMP characters (such as the breathing mark) do not position correctly.
• MS Word 2010 — slurs display as square boxes. Combining marks do not position correctly on anything except letters (x, X).
•  Mozilla Thunderbird — slurs display as "tiny tips". Everything else seems to render correctly.

Supported character ranges

License

Copyright (c) 1994-2013, SIL International ( http://www.sil.org/) with Reserved Font Names "Doulos" and "SIL".

Downloads

Previous versions can be found on the Previous Versions page.

Source files (for the keyboard/template/documentation) are included in these downloads for anyone wishing to tweak the keyboard/template/documentation. For technical/design background, please view these pages (if you have access to Teamwork):  https://sharing.teamwork-global.net/content/music-notation

Support

As these fonts and utilities are distributed at no cost, we are unable to provide a commercial level of personal technical support. We will, however, try to resolve problems that are reported to us.

As a font in development, it is expected that the final release of this font may have significant changes, especially with regard to the metrics. We are also looking for feedback on the font itself. We do hope that you will report problems or improvements so they can be addressed in the final release of this product. Contact information for feedback can be found in the README.txt which is part of the font download.

Please note that these fonts are intended for use by experienced computer users. Installing and using these fonts is not a trivial matter. The most effective technical support is usually provided by an experienced computer user who can personally sit down with you at your computer to troubleshoot the problem.

General troubleshooting information, including frequently asked questions, can be found in the documentation. Additional information is also available on the general Font FAQ page. If that fails to answer your question you can contact us at:

Email:

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