Edwin: typographic apostrophe not accessible via shortcut on Windows

• Feb 15, 2021 - 11:00
Reported version
3.6
Type
Wording/Translation
Frequency
Once
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Reproducibility
Always
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
No
Project
MuseScore

There is already a post about it on github (see below), but I guess nobody looks there.
Edwin does not have a typographic apostrophe, but for lyrics this is essential! It should look like a "flying" comma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe).
Apart from that it belongs to the default character inventory of a font. Please add it to the font and check if other common characters are missing.
Example:
edwin_apostrophe.png

Original post on github:
There seems to be no typographic apostrophe in Edwin (see red circle in the attached example). However, the apostrophe is immensely important for lyrics and should look like a comma (see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe). For the typographic apostrophe I created an extra key combination (German keyboard modified with Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC)) which works perfectly with other fonts, so it is not a typo. Please check in the future for new fonts if the default characters are complete, otherwise a release makes no sense and only makes complainers like me crawl out of their holes 😉
Nevertheless, I'm glad that there is now an alternative to Free Serif, which just isn't really any good for a font in music notation. You should think about adding more font styles (see, for example, the styles of the freely available Alegreya), possibly including an SC variant, since this typographic feature is not supported out of the box in MuseScore. Such styles are enormously important for good and, above all, attractive music notation.

Comments

• Feb 15, 2021 - 11:51
Severity S4 - Minor ⇒ S5 - Suggestion

What post on GitHub?
Anyway, It does have what Wikipedia calls "Typwriter apostrophe" and it has the accents.
Unbenannt.png
And of course the normal double quotes, anything else is not on the keyboard anyhow

Reply

• Feb 15, 2021 - 14:05

The typewriter apostrophe was invented when typewriters came along, hence the name. In order not to need extra keys for " " , ʼ and thus make typing more difficult, there was only this straight ' and the comma, which looked the same. This allowed you to cover quotation marks, commas, apostrophes, etc.
Typesetters or today graphic designers, however, always use the typesetter apostrophe in books, magazines, etc. If you really want to set scores for a publication, then you also have to stick to the art of typography — nothing, I think, is more related to "music engraving". That's why the typesetter apostrophe is important (see professional score example from the IMSLP).
Screenshot 2021-02-15 144230.png
So I wouldn't say this is just a suggestion, and any professional typographer would agree on this point. Besides, the character already exists, it is identical in form to the comma… it just can fly 😏
On the Mac (alt+shift+#, germ. Layout), and according to Wikipedia also on Linux, there is a keyboard shortcut. On Windows, admittedly, it's not as convenient unless you use a modified layout.

P.S.
That wasn't meant as a negative criticism with github, it looked like the official site for the font. Someone also made a comment there about Polish special characters, which is already a few days old. There was no reaction to this "issue" so far: https://github.com/MuseScoreFonts/Edwin/issues

Reply

• Feb 16, 2021 - 17:38

@Jojo: this code works just as well as Pretty Good Privacy 🥳
Had guru contact via github in the meantime. The typographic apostrophe is included in Special Characters and so it is in Edwin.
I just tried it again on a Mac and there it actually works via the default keys for the Apostrophe/Right Single Quotation Mark (ʼ). The character seems to be included, but on Windows it does not work via the shortcut. This is only true for Edwin, it works for other fonts e.g. FreeSerif. Both are not installed via the OS, are they? So I wonder where the error is. Is there an older version of Edwin implemented in the Windows build?

Reply

• Feb 18, 2021 - 09:30

I did some more research with FontForge and compared Edwin with another font where the typographic apostrophe works under Windows. The reason is that something is missing in Edwin, but not where the actual character (U+2019) is placed, but at the position U+02BC:
2021-02-18cut.png
(The character(s) missing in Edwin can be seen in the screenshot from the Alegreya font)
It has other functions and is also used in some languages (Hawaiian) e.g. as glottal stop (we have it in German too, but it is not written down). It would be good to fill the gap at U+02BC and best also U+02BB (copy+paste from left and right single quotation mark). Unfortunately the thread on github has already been closed, so it wouldn't be bad to contact the guru again and point to this thread.

P.S. I don't know how the font was created, FontForge still shows some errors and on Mac there are also error messages when installing Edwin via the OS.

Link to the GitHub issue: https://github.com/MuseScoreFonts/Edwin/issues/3

Reply

• Feb 18, 2021 - 14:33

I'm afraid that's right. No idea why I chose u02BC for my modified keyboard back then. Probably I looked in the Windows character table and found the "apostrophe" without suspecting that there might be another one. Some Unicode characters I would really classify as redundant.
Still, it's not bad to keep filling gaps 👍 — I will have to adjust my layout as well, though.

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