Finale (v25) and fonts behind 255?

[OCTO]

Hello.
I try to edit a font and to add several symbols that I frequently use, but when I open it in Finale I cannot see anything behind 255 slot. How to achieve this?

[OCTO]

i have done some tests.
If I don't have the font name in Macsymbolfonts.txt my font looks weird but I can see the all symbols, but if I add it it looks good but I cannot reach behind 255. What I am doing wrong?

[David Ward]

This is most likely completely irrelevant, since my knowledge of how Fonts work is non-existent, but I remember a while ago experiencing something similar because Finale was looking in the System not the User library, or the other way round.

[OCTO]

It actually sees the correct font, but it is not working as I want...

[jan]

If you add a font to MacSymbolFonts.txt, Finale ALWAYS cuts off everything above 255.

If you want to use 0-255 AND unicode symbols above (I assume you mean 0xE000?), it becomes more difficult.
Finale MacOS has a bug that doesn't allow to access the symbols 128-159 in these hybrid fonts.
On Windows it works. For example the November 2 font has this problem.

To get 0-255 (except 128-159) plus 0xE0000 (and more) to work you also need to use the correct font encoding.
The easiest way is to load a working font (like November 2 or my Elbsound music fonts like Aruvarb), change the symbols and just recompile it.

Dependent on the encoding the symbols 128-255 can appear in wrong slots.
You also may have to use the slot 0xF000 instead of 0x0000 for the 0-255 symbols (or even both). 0xF000 to 0xF0FF are mapped to 0x000/0x00FF if a font is added to MacSymbolFonts.txt.

Jan

[OCTO]

If you add a font to MacSymbolFonts.txt, Finale ALWAYS cuts off everything above 255.

If you want to use 0-255 AND unicode symbols above (I assume you mean 0xE000?), it becomes more difficult.
Finale MacOS has a bug that doesn't allow to access the symbols 128-159 in these hybrid fonts.
On Windows it works. For example the November 2 font has this problem.

To get 0-255 (except 128-159) plus 0xE0000 (and more) to work you also need to use the correct font encoding.
The easiest way is to load a working font (like November 2 or my Elbsound music fonts like Aruvarb), change the symbols and just recompile it.

Dependent on the encoding the symbols 128-255 can appear in wrong slots.
You also may have to use the slot 0xF000 instead of 0x0000 for the 0-255 symbols (or even both). 0xF000 to 0xF0FF are mapped to 0x000/0x00FF if a font is added to MacSymbolFonts.txt.

Jan

Thanks for explaining, Jan! MM has made it very
So, is it possible to create a single music font that accesses behind 255 slot AND to be functional on both Windows and MacOS?
If you have FontForge, FontLab or Fontografer template, I would be very thankful if you could share it. Thanks.

[jan]

This is not possible if you want to access all 0-255 and all unicode symbols both on MacOS and on Windows.

AFAIK it's only possible to access all symbols on Windows and all symbols except (128-159) on MacOS.
I have told MakeMusic about this bug in 2016, and they said it will probably be fixed it in the next update ...

Another area that is difficult to handle in Finale is the very high area above 0x10000 which is not fully supported by Finale's font annotation files and IIRC not accessible in all dialogs. This area holds for example the "Unicode Musical Symbols" block (0x1d100). But also many other programs are not compatible with these symbols.
In the Elbsound Music Fonts Package I used a few of these "Unicode Musical Symbols" fonts which are not accessible to Finale and converted them to 0-255 (Symbola, Musica, Noto Sans Symbols, Euterpe, Unifont Upper).

You can download the PagnIFIN font as a demo for the Elbsound Music Fonts Package:
https://elbsound.studio/elbsound-music- ... p#download
This font is such a hybrid font, made with FontForge. But I don't have a FontForge template.
It uses the 0-255 block, the 0xe000 area and the 0xf000 area.

The November 2 font does the same and additionally uses the 0xf500-0xf800 and the 0x1d100 area, but this doesn't affect the general encoding.

Jan

[benwiggy]

AFAIK it's only possible to access all symbols on Windows and all symbols except (128-159) on MacOS.
I have told MakeMusic about this bug in 2016, and they said it will probably be fixed it in the next update ...

Is that still not fixed?

[OCTO]

Is that still not fixed?

I think you have forgotten the laugh icon:

This is not possible if you want to access all 0-255 and all unicode symbols both on MacOS and on Windows.

So, do you suggest making two versions of the same font? How it can be achieved? Having templates would be the best way. Perhaps tisimst knows? ping:

...

[jan]

Making and maintaining two versions of the font might be difficult ...
In the best case you only need to change the encoding before generating the font.
In the worst case you may also have to change the symbol slots for the fonts.

You could also think about just omitting symbols 128-159 and put them somewhere in the unicode area.
This will make the font cross-platform.

More questions:
- what do you want to do with the font? Who uses it? Does it have to be cross-platform?
- should it also be compatible with other software (e.g. Sibelius, can't remember if that also required some extra encodings)