Changing the Default music font between Bravura and Petaluma, changes Library/Font Styles/Default Music Text Font between Bravura Text and Petaluma Text.
However, it’s different when switching from Bravura to a third-party SMuFL font. The Default Music Text Font keeps Bravura Text, even if a third-party font has its Text version.
Is Dorico’s support for third party SMuFL fonts limited by design?
If you’re developing your own SMuFL font, you’ll need to create your Music Text font. Then, set the Library/Font Styles/Default Music Text Font to use your Music Text font.
It would be great if the Music Text font was specified in the related JSON file.
Yes, I am working on a new SMuFL font, including a Music Text Font. I just don’t understand how changing the music font to Petaluma, automatically switches the Default Music Text Font to Petaluma Text.
Petaluma is a special case in Dorico. As Daniel Spreadbury explained in an earlier thread, Dorico’s automatic switching to Petaluma Text (and similarly Bravura Text) is based on older hard-coded behavior that predates the later textFontFamily metadata in SMuFL, rather than on a general mechanism applied to all third-party fonts. So with third-party SMuFL fonts, Dorico typically won’t switch the Default Music Text Font automatically unless you set it manually, even if your font has a corresponding text companion.
In other words, this is not really a limitation of SMuFL itself, but rather Dorico’s current implementation/history. It would indeed be much nicer if the associated music-text font were always picked up from metadata in a consistent way for third-party fonts too.
I vaguely remember that discussion, couldn’t find the thread though.
Dorico’s handling of this is just confusing to the end-user. Changing the Music Font gives two different results, depending on the font. Sometimes the Music Text Font is affected, sometimes not.
Thanks for the link.