I have over 300 pages of Persian music ( quarter-tones) that is scored with a custom font in Finale. I installed a font ( custom PM font for Persian music)and it shows fine in Finale. I then, export the .musx file to musicxml file and loaded .xml file in Dorico 3.5. Now the fonts don’t show up!
It seems after I exported the finale files to .xml the quarter-tone accidentals didn’t transfer/translate to Dorico from Musicxml. So, I did this:
I loaded the font, in Write mode
I edited the accidental to my own font (PM) and updated a custom key signature.
However, this is tedious as I have to change the accidentals to quartertones one at a time. Is there an easier way to do this?
I probably have over 400 custom time signatures to update!
Dorico only supports SMuFL fonts by design I believe. Aren’t Finale fonts basically custom to Finale only? Anyhow you’ll need to have your font converted to SMuFL. From what I hear that shouldn’t be onerous, basically just moving the Glyphs to their proper location. Fontlab 7 is on sale today and tomorrow I believe if you want to do it yourself.
MusicXML does not rely on SMuFL so the fact that Finale and other notation apps don’t use SMiFL is irrelevant.
Does the file play back correctly with quarter tones in Finale? If not, Finale might just printing a non-standard accidental in the key signature but “thinks” everything else is in standard 3 flats.
If you attach the MusicXML file (zip it first) somebody might be able to help. At least we should be able to see if the quarter tone data is in the MusicXML file or not. If it isn’t there at all, Dorico obviously can’t read it. If it is there but not in the format Dorico wants to see, there might be some way to fix that.
FWIW MusicXML represents quarter tones the same way as other accidentals, by specifying how much the pitch is altered from the basic diatonic note - for example C quarter sharp is represented as C “altered” by +0.25 tones. That is independent of what fonts you use to display the accidentals.
