SMuFL deadline - action required

[Urs Liska]

Yesterday at the MusicXML community meeting at the Musikmesse in 
Frankfurt we were informed about the approaching 1.0 release of 
Steinberg's proposed SMuFL standard (http://smufl.org). Once 1.0 is 
published there shall be no further changes in the set of covered 
glyphs, and the presumed deadline for _any_ feature requests in this 
regard will be the end of this month.

AFAIK SMuFL doesn't yet cover _all_ of Feta's glyphs, and we (i.e. Janek 
and I) agreed upon that this would be a crucial thing for us to have.

It is to be expected that SMuFL compliant fonts will become available, 
and if we're continuing in the direction of Nathan and improve our 
adaptor to use SMuFL compliant fonts from LilyPond we should really 
_have_ this compatibility. New SMuFL fonts will (other than the 
reference font Bravura) not contain the complete glyph set and probably 
not LilyPond's complete glyph set. But if we have glyphs in Feta that 
aren't part of SMuFL we'll have the _guarantee_ that a SMuFL font won't 
cover our whole range.
_If_ it is completely covered in the standard there is at least the 
option to get appropriate fonts or (in case of a suitable license) to 
extend an existing font.

I think it is good to have a choice to use other fonts in LilyPond. 
While I very much like Feta and while I'm convinced of its quality 
changing font would simply allow for a different appearance, which _is_ 
necessary in some situations (house style, appropriate style for certain 
music etc.). So while a substantial redesign of LilyPond's font handling 
definitely seems far away I think the SMuFL compatibility approach would 
be a very useful first step.

Daniel Spreadbury explicitly said that there are some areas of old music 
notation in Feta that he doesn't sufficiently understand to incorporate 
into SMuFL. Probably he's particularly talking about the Kievan 
notation, so I strongly ask that someone who is familiar with that area 
get in touch with Daniel ASAP to give him the necessary information.

It would also be _very_ good if someone with the respective experience 
could try to determine if there are other areas or spots in Feta that 
aren't yet covered by SMuFL. I'm sorry, but I definitely can't do that, 
but I'll gladly assist in getting information to the right place.

Best
Urs