DEPRECATED -- This repo is now part of OpenLilyLib. All further updates will be there instead.

SMuFL is a new proposed standard for music fonts, formed alongside Steinberg's in-development notation software. The first and currently the only SMuFL font is Bravura, a bold and easy-to-read typeface developed for Steinberg's program by Daniel Spreadbury. It is freely available under the SIL Open Font License.

LilyPond is a free and open-source music engraving program. This is a LilyPond script providing partial support for Bravura and other future SMuFL fonts. It is a heavy modified derivative of LilyJAZZ.

Perhaps someday the Feta font will be made SMuFL-compatible so Feta can be used in other software.

Usage

Current version: SMuFL 0.7

Make sure Bravura is installed on your system (get it from the SMuFL website), and that smufldata.ily and bravura.ily are in the same directory. Include bravura.ily and add \bravuraOn (or \smuflOn to avoid Bravura-specific overrides) to the Staff context:

\include "bravura.ily"

\new Staff {
  \bravuraOn
  c'4 d' e' c'
}

Or, better:

\include "bravura.ily"

\score {
  % ...
  \context {
    \Staff {
      \bravuraOn
    }
  }
}

With this, many music features will be automatically converted into the Bravura font. Compilation will be a little slower, espcially for large scores.

Commands

To invoke a glyph by name like \musicglyph, use the markup command \smuflglyph. \smuflglyph #"segno", for example, will print a segno sign in the Bravura font. \smuflglyph is not compatible wih \musicglyph, and manual conversion may be necessary. Sorry!

A few other new commands are added, such as the dynamics \pppppp, \ffffff, and \niente.

If you want access to LilySMuFL's new commands, but don't want to slow down compilation for now, leave the include in place and comment out \bravuraOn or \smuflOn. Now you can use \smuflglyph, etc. while keeping compilation speedy. There is a caveat: if you use \niente, add this line where you would put \bravuraOn:

\override Staff.DynamicText.stencil = #smufl-dynamic-text

Without it, \niente will look a bit strange.

Updating

SMuFL regularly changes its character codes with each update, and LilySMuFL is ideally forward-compatible with these changes. To try out a SMuFL update, first update the font installed on your system. Then download the JSON metadata file from the SMuFL website, replace the existing glyphnames.json, and run python3.3 glyphnames.py. This will update smufldata.ily, and will hopefully not break.

You may need to delete ~/.lilypond-fonts.cache-2/ if LilyPond has trouble recognizing the new font.

To-do list

LilySMuFL has a few defects. A few make it not yet usable for professional engraving, and others are simply Feta features not converted to SMuFL yet.

• Long dynamics (ppppp) are cut off to the right
• Styles not supported for rests, noteheads, or flags
• Strange Script alignment at times (fermatas, staccatos)
• Occasional ugly Accidental spacing
• Still using Feta: Arpeggio, BreathingSign, Dots, OttavaBracket, PercentRepeat, TrillSpanner, TupletNumber, StemTremolo, SustainPedal