preliminary proposal: New Unicode characters for Arabic music half-flat and half-sharp symbols

[Garth Wallace via Unicode]

Philippe is entirely correct here. The fact that a symbol has somewhat
different meanings in different contexts does not mean that it is actually
multiple visually identical symbols. Otherwise Unicode would be re-encoding
the Latin alphabet many, many times over.

During most of Bach's career, the prevailing tuning system was meantone. He
wrote the Well-Tempered Clavier to explore the possibilities afforded by a
new tuning system called well temperament. In the modern era, his work has
typically been played in 12-tone equal temperament. That does not mean that
the ♯ that Bach used in his score for the Well-Tempered Clavier was not the
same symbol as the ♯ in his other scores, or that they somehow invisibly
became yet another symbol when the score is opened on the music desk of a
modern Steinway.

On Sat, May 26, 2018 at 2:58 PM, Philippe Verdy <verdy_p at wanadoo.fr> wrote:

> Even flat notes or rythmic and pause symbols in Western musical notations
> have different contextual meaning depending on musical keys at start of
> scores, and other notations or symbols added above the score. So their
> interpretation are also variable according to context, just like tuning in
> a Arabic musical score, which is also keyed and annotated differently.
> These keys can also change within the same partition score.
> So both the E12 vs. E24 systems (which are not incompatible) may also be
> used in Western and Arabic music notations. The score keys will give the
> interpretation.
> Tone marks taken isolately mean absolutely nothing in both systems outside
> the keyed scores in which they are inserted, except that they are just
> glyphs, which may be used to mean something else (e.g. a note in a comics
> artwork could be used to denote someone whistling, without actually
> encoding any specific tone, or rythmic).
>
>
> 2018-05-17 17:48 GMT+02:00 Hans Åberg via Unicode <unicode at unicode.org>:
>
>>
>>
>> > On 17 May 2018, at 16:47, Garth Wallace via Unicode <
>> unicode at unicode.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 12:41 AM Hans Åberg <haberg-1 at telia.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > > On 17 May 2018, at 08:47, Garth Wallace via Unicode <
>> unicode at unicode.org> wrote:
>> > >
>> > >> On Wed, May 16, 2018 at 12:42 AM, Hans Åberg via Unicode <
>> unicode at unicode.org> wrote:
>> > >>
>> > >> It would be best to encode the SMuFL symbols, which is rather
>> comprehensive and include those:
>> > >>  https://www.smufl what should be unified.org
>> > >>  http://www.smufl.org/version/latest/
>> > >> ...
>> > >>
>> > >> These are otherwise originally the same, but has since drifted. So
>> whether to unify them or having them separate might be best to see what
>> SMuFL does, as they are experts on the issue.
>> > >>
>> > > SMuFL's standards on unification are not the same as Unicode's. For
>> one thing, they re-encode Latin letters and Arabic digits multiple times
>> for various different uses (such as numbers used in tuplets and those used
>> in time signatures).
>> >
>> > The reason is probably because it is intended for use with music
>> engraving, and they should then be rendered differently.
>> >
>> > Exactly. But Unicode would consider these a matter for font switching
>> in rich text.
>>
>> One original principle was ensure different encodings, so if the practise
>> in music engraving is to keep them different, they might be encoded
>> differently.
>>
>> > > There are duplicates all over the place, like how the half-sharp
>> symbol is encoded at U+E282 as "accidentalQuarterToneSharpStein", at
>> U+E422 as "accidentalWyschnegradsky3TwelfthsSharp", at U+ED35 as
>> "accidentalQuarterToneSharpArabic", and at U+E444 as
>> "accidentalKomaSharp". They are graphically identical, and the first three
>> even all mean the same thing, a quarter tone sharp!
>> >
>> > But the tuning system is different, E24 and Pythagorean. Some Latin and
>> Greek uppercase letters are exactly the same but have different encodings.
>> >
>> > Tuning systems are not scripts.
>>
>> That seems obvious. As I pointed out above, the Arabic glyphs were
>> originally taken from Western ones, but have a different musical meaning,
>> also when played using E12, as some do.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://unicode.org/pipermail/unicode/attachments/20180527/af48ee40/attachment.html>