Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

I've finished version 1.0 of the shakuhachi font, for use in writing shakuhachi notation. It should work on Mac and Windows. Linux I'm not sure about, but it's a regular old .ttf file, so I imagine it'll be okay. I've use the font a little, and Schlefer-sensei has used it a bit more; we both found it easy to use, and I think we've worked out *most* of the kinks.

If you'd like to use it, you can download it (and some supporting files) here:
http://public.me.com/ericford

In the folder I've included an Excel spreadsheet which gives the key bindings (e.g. typing 'c' gives you a chi character). However, those key bindings are for Mac, and things might vary a little on Windows. If there are problems, please let me know and I'll try to clear them up.

I also included a Word file, so you can see how I had to set it up for the font to work correctly, reading top to bottom, left to right. (Basically, you change the text direction in Word.) I prefer to use typesetting software, like InDesign or Quark, but I'm a typesetter; I assume I'm alone in that regard. I also included a pdf of the Word doc, so you can compare it and see how it's working on your computer.

As far as I can tell, the font works well in Word, except for the weak right beat. I have no idea how to solve that. Word also seems to have some kind of bug where it changes fonts on you if it decides a character is missing from a given font. Be forewarned: you may have to do a little checking to make sure that weird things aren't happening in your Word files. Everything is fine in InDesign. Unluckily (actually, luckily), I don't have access to a Windows computer, so someone's going to have to try it out on Windows and let me know how it works.

To use the font, you just type. Most of the characters have been created with both regular and meri version (for instance, there's a tsu, a tsu chu, and a tsu meri). There are also regular old meris and karis for both the left and the right, which you could type after the character to get the accidental. For the octave markers, type them *before* the character they modify. Beat marks go where you would expect: after the characters.

There are some quirky things with the vertical lines, which I was able tweak a little, but not fix completely, because of font-spacing issues. The "short" versions of the double and triple lines are for grace notes. Type the lines in between the notes they connect; each line will cover the space of one note.

The character set is based on the characters that Jim Nyoraku Schlefer uses to make his workbooks, so they should look familiar to everyone, and it should be a complete set for sankyoku or modern composition. In addition, there are some characters, like korokoro, which appear in honkyoku. I'm in the Kinko/Jin Nyodo school, so the characters are all from that lineage. If there are additional characters that anyone wants added, I can do so for in the next iteration of the font.

Thanks ahead of time for all any feedback. You can post it here or email me.

-Eric