I am a former Finale-user, there I had created a Chinese articulations library, quite a hassle. Now with Dorico off course I have to start from the scratch.
Maybe there is somebody who already worked something out and is willing to share?
Same for integration of Chinese instruments, anybody done some work here?
And how does it work with sharing such content in Dorico, as there is no possibility (at least as I understood) to share libraries of articulations and instruments?
(might be important: I am using Win11)
Thanks (for any comment related to Chinese instruments in Dorico!)
Robert
It is possible to share things you have created: you can use Library > Export Library to export a library file from a project in which you have created custom instruments, playing techniques, and other things.
Thanks Daniel, got this basic.
Now I am trying to create own playing techniques.
First big limitation: it is obviously not possible to create an own category (for Chinese instruments).
Would also be great to create own new ornaments and articulations, as there is a standard for Chinese instruments, but it seems not possible to integrate this in a smooth way.
So in the moment the only way to integrate such information seems to create own new playing techniques.
But now I am struggling with creating a new playing technique, based on a font for Chinese instruments. Can’t get any glyph from this font to show in the playing technique dialogue. And when using text instead of glyph I cannot choose the font, righ?
Am I missing something or is it just not possible?
Thanks!
Here the font I am using (can only send jpeg, as ttf files are not supported for upload) :
I’m not familiar with the PiPa font you’re using, but you should find that you can use it without problems. The main issue is presumably knowing where in the font (in terms of the Unicode code points) the glyphs you’re looking for are located. At a guess, they’re probably at U+0000 and upward, i.e. at the beginning of the basic multi-lingual plane, so when you are editing the playing technique, on the Glyph tab on the right-hand side, you will need to choose the PiPa font and then also choose an appropriate Unicode range, so try U+0000 to U+00FF to see if that shows the symbols.
Looks like this font hasn’t any unicode asigned yet …
Any idea for a work-around, so that I can use the TTF instead of having to create images for every symbol?
Thanks!
It looks as if the characters in the PiPa font are mapped in the range I expected: the selected character you show in Character Map is 0x32, or ASCII 50, which is Unicode U+0032. Try changing the Max value to e.g. U+00FF, and then scroll down: hopefully you will see the symbols you’re looking for.
I am interesting in this topic, maybe I can try to help check out what the problem is and find some solutions if possible. I personally was playing Pipa when I was young as well. So I have some understanding about Pipa and most Chinese traditional instruments. Is it ok to share the Pipa playing techniques font so I can investigate?
I don’t know exactly the reason why, but it seems to be some compatiblity issue with this font on Dorico in Windows 11. (I cannot see the glyphs as well on my Windows 11 24H2, Dorico 5.1.70)
I tried to open them in FontCreator, modified the font name and unified them to Pipa (removed the [BY PZJ] string in the original name), re-exported the font and now it works.
Please try this updated Pipa font first to see if it works on your machine. I’ll check if I can make other fonts works as well later.
I am not an expert on fonts creation and organization. But I encountered some mysterious font compatibility issues between Windows and Mac. (Mainly because my lack of font knowledge). One of which is how you name the font when creating it. I have to keep only the English name and make it simple and unfied in those naming fields to make the font both recognizable and operate seamlessly on Windows and Mac. Especially somehow Dorico read fonts in a different way compares to MS Word, PowerPoint etc.
But for these Chinese instrument playing techique fonts, maybe they also have some other technical issues in original files, and by letting FontCreator(the font application I use) reorganize and re-export them, the problem is fixed. Maybe some other font experts can help shed some light on this.
I do echo Lao Luo’s hope to have customizable PT categories so we can better organize special custom play techiniques like how we can create custom instrument families now. That would be very very helpful!
Thank you very much, now it works on my mashine as well!
I received these fonts about 10 years ago from the Hongkong Chinese Orchestra, they created them for use in Finale (where it worked also in a Windows system), they told me they are provided as open source, so there should not be a compyright issue here. Now I’ll see if I might be able to combine all fonts into just one font, would make handling and use by others more easy.
