Change appearance of clef octavation (issue 3295)

Change appearance of clef octavation (issue 3295)

OctavateEight was set in small sized italic font.  It looked anemic.
Engraved examples suggest that in most cases the octavation is roman,
and its thickness should correspond to the thickness of the clef lines.

[Trevor Daniels, 2013-04-04 10:30:13]

Like Phil and his wife, I prefer the current version.
This patch makes the octavation symbol too coarse
and heavy.  I suspect the old scores which used
punches to engrave the octavation symbol were
not able to reliably reproduce small light italic
characters and had no option but to use a heavy
typeface.  Modern scores seem to prefer a lighter
touch.

[dak, 2013-04-04 10:42:12]

It's probably worth noting that by far most uses of octavated clefs are for the
purpose of correctness (similar to "transposition in xxx"): the player/singer
would not actually execute the piece differently if the octavation was omitted
from the clef.

I can think of one exception: modern-clef renditions of old music where the alto
and tenor voices might switch between treble and treble_8 liberally between
movements.  However, even in this case the ambitus usually tells the story at a
glance.

Octavated clefs are also useful for ensemble players to let them understand the
desired pitch even when not playing the instrument themselves.

At any rate, I don't know of any situation where the octavation of a clef would
change except between movements, so the necessity for a strong imprint seems
low.

[janek, 2013-04-04 12:07:38]

Hi,

i suggest to move this discussion to tracker issue.  Rietveld is good for
discussing details of the code changes, but it's the tracker issue that we
expect to be kept around longer (and also images can be attached there).

best,
Janek

[janek, 2013-04-06 08:39:51]

unbold it