The Bravura font is released on a SIL font licence, so anyone is free to copy or modify any glyphs in it for their own font, (which must then be issued on the same licence). So it’s kind of surprising that there aren’t more open source SMuFL font projects going on.
Though with over 3,500 characters in Bravura, the scale of the task can seem daunting. However, there’s probably a bare minimum of around 750 that would cover a large proportion of ‘standard’ repertoire, and several of those are simple geometric shapes like circles, squares, lines, etc.
Furthermore, because you can set a font style for Dynamics, Figured Bass, Chord Symbols, etc, it could be useful to produce a SMuFL-compliant font just for those elements, while keeping Bravura as the ‘Music Font’. Similarly, a SMuFL-compliant font could just contain a few noteheads, clefs or other symbols that you want to patch in, in the Music Symbols editor.
So, during a rainy lockdown with no internet, I decided to take Florian Kretlow’s unfinished “Sebastian” font, and convert it to be SMuFL-compliant.
After a couple of weeks, I now have a functional (but limited) font in Dorico, using the Sebastian glyphs (460 of them so far!). It’s been a useful learning experience.
Anyway, Florian and I have been discussing how to work collaboratively on a font, and think we’ve got a setup on github working. So if anyone would like to get involved, do send me a PM. Ideally, you know your way around FontForge or similar app (must be able to export UFO3 format).
Alternatively, if anyone wants to make their own SMuFL fonts, then this thread can be a useful conversation point.