Dear fellow Doricians,
I think I noticed something I quite do not like with Dorico for iPad: if I create a file from scratch and add some lyrics, I think they’re using Academico (which is ok, although not my favourite). But if I import a dorico file from my laptop (where I use Linux Libertine O for my lyrics), the iPad version uses an ugly sans-serif font… I would like an option to revert to Academico — I understand it’s quite complicated to deal with third party fonts on the iPad.
Is there something I’ve missed?
Font substitution is not easy, from what I gather. There are also problems if you use other SMuFL fonts for things like Figured Bass, Metronome marks, and other Font Styles, which don’t get converted back to Bravura, as the notation does.
I agree that defaulting to Academico for everything (with a note in the file that tells the desktop version to switch back to the original font upon reopening it there) would be ideal, assuming we continue to be limited in fonts on iOS.
(Side note: would there be a way for the dorico file to embed the appropriate fonts into the file as some other apps do? I understand this is contingent upon you owning a license for a font or it being open source.)
That also would be ‘non-trivial’ to achieve, and legally questionable. It’s one thing to embed the font glyphs used in a document for display (as in a PDF); it’s another to embed the font in an editable document.
Fair enough. I didn’t presume to speak to what the coding entailed, and I was careful to point out that it was “contingent upon you owning a license for the font”. I hadn’t considered the differing nature of how fonts are embedded in PDFs though.
There could also be a difference between a standard dorico file and a dorico “package”. Most programs that allow this type of functionality give you a warning about fonts (and some cannot be embedded by default) and you have to agree to a disclaimer before it will include the fonts in the pkg file.
I know there are ways to embed fonts that are available in particular documents but can’t be accessed by the rest of the computer and the fonts never become cached on the system. I have no idea what’s involved in this, but it’s nice when it works well.
How would Dorico check that you had a licence? If you already have the font installed, then it doesn’t need to be embedded!
We are talking apples and oranges in terms of usage. If you’re embedding a font, that is so the font can travel with the file. It obviously isn’t necessary on the creator’s computer; it is precisely the lack of font on another machine that will be editing the file that makes the embedding necessary.
Perhaps a font could be embedded in the file but only used/displayed if the Steinberg ID opening the file matched the ID of the creator of the file. (Iex big dorico and iPad dorico match)
Even if we could satisfy any licensing requirements for font embedding, the fact remains that we cannot display arbitrary third-party fonts in Dorico for iPad. Until Qt provides support for the iOS 13+ font picker and solutions for the associated security issues, we can’t support arbitrary fonts, regardless of from where they come.
Ok, Daniel. But, to go back to my initial question, would it be possible to revert to Academico instead of that sans-serif font, when dealing with an existing Dorico project?
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Well, it wouldn’t be trivial, but it would be possible. We’ll think about it.
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Not to add to the noise, but just to chip in and say I agree with Marc that the sans is obnoxious and jarring. Academico would be so much better.
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