If any of you have used Figurato in your documents, to create figured bass using lyrics; then you will know that it doesn’t really work since Dorico 4.1, because the figures appear massively far away from the staff.
I still have quite a few ‘legacy’ documents that use Figurato, which I created before Dorico’s figured bass feature was implemented; or to overcome limitations in Dorico’s figured bass – most notably for figures on the upper staff of the keyboard.
So… I have created a font that is designed to be a drop-in replacement for Figurato. (E.g. you just change the font in the Paragraph Style.)
It is not nearly as clever as Figurato, and so it either knows about a particular combination of stacked figures, or it doesn’t.
It also has one significant limitation: text of the form [numeral] [accidental] will be represented as numeral OVER accidental, not both on one line. The accidental must be before the numeral to be on the same line.
It’s still in the early stages, but I’d welcome some input – particularly additional stacks of figures that it ought to know about; and whether it works on Windows.
It also has the full set of SMuFL-compliant figures.
Version 0.5 is now sufficiently ‘mature’ for most purposes. Collision of accidentals on rows has been fixed, brackets are now included, and there’s a decent range of figures.
(Updated download in first post.)
Again, it would be useful to know if this works properly on Windows, and if there are other glaring omissions in the range of figures.
Version 1.0 of Gofigure is now finished. Lots more glyphs; slightly revised syntax handling, which is hopefully more compatible with Figurato. Some support for French-style plusses.
For reasons (something I should have done at the start), the glyphs might be at a different size, and you’ll need to adjust Paragraph Style > Lyrics or Font Style > Figured Bass accordingly in existing document. See the manual for details.
Thank you for all this work! I tried to use it, but it doesn’t seem to work on my end. I installed the font (I’m on Windows) and instructed Dorico to change the standard figured bass font by substituting Academico for Gofigure, but
the + symbols are not recognized;
when reopening the Dorico file, it no longer finds the font, even though it is installed;
worse, if I switch back to Academico, I lose all the figured bass (fortunately, I had saved it in the Cloud).
Perhaps I didn’t fully understand how to use the file
You should set the “Figured Bass Font” as GoFigure, replacing Bravura; not the “Figured Bass TEXT Font”.
If you set the “Figured Bass Font” to Academico, your figures will disappear, because it’s not a music font, but a text font.
If you want use the + symbols, you will need to set GoFigure as the Lyric (Translation) font, and then use it in the style of Lyrics, rather than using Dorico’s built-in Figured Bass tool.
I think it’s helpful know that all the music symbols in Dorico (including special numerals such as time signatures, fingering, etc.) are on codepoints different from ASCII (such as ABC123). By default Dorico uses a SMuFL font such as Bravura for figured bass. But it also gives you the option to use any font you want for these numbers, and that’s what “Figured Bass Text Font” is for – when you choose Engraving Options > Figured Bass > Design > Plain font.
I’m glad I asked, because for someone who has never used Figurato before, the PDF doesn’t quite explain how it works. I didn’t even know you could use multiple lines of lyrics and a specific style for the translation. This is fantastic because it allows me to use the lyrics for Roman numerals and the translation for Gofigure!
