Complex Musical Time Signature

[mikeincousa]

I am seeking to add spiffy complex time signatures directly into professional documents.

Is there a way I can add unicode for custom time signatures under Insert Special Characters, or some other method?

The Musescore Time Signature >More>Create It works nicely but it is app bound.

Reference: https://w3c.github.io/smufl/gitbook/tables/time-signatures.html

Thanks for any guidance.

[ajlittoz]

Your question is ambiguous because you don’t specify the context into which you want to enter the time signatures.

• time signature in text

  • as a “linear” fraction like 6/8

    Type E086 or u+e086 and immediately Alt+X, then E08E Alt+X and E088 Alt+X

  • as a traditional notation with 6 above 8

    Use the Math component to create a math “formula” with Insert>Object>Formula. Type binom { 6 } { 8 }. I wrote 6 for short, but do the e086 Alt+X stance to get the correct character.

• time signature on score

  This is too complex for Writer. Design your score in Draw component. This is a vector application. You can then position the characters anywhere. When done, copy the drawing and paste it into the Writer document.

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[LeroyG]

EDIT (only this line): Just discovered that you can copy and paste from the W3C page. E.g.: 12/8 is U+F605.

This may do the trick with single digit numbers. I still haven’t figured out how to write 12/8 correctly. I am working with Liberation Serif and Bravura Text fonts.

• a: the text before the time signature
• U+F5D0 Alt+X: the lower 4
• U+F5D9 Alt+X: the upper 8
• U+2008 Alt+X, U+2008 Alt+X: two additional spaces (maybe another space code can be useful)
• a: the text after the time signature
• select both 4 and 8, and set Bravura Text

Unicode codes:

U+F5C8 for lower 0	U+F5C9 for upper 0
U+F5CA for lower 1	U+F5CB for upper 1
U+F5CC for lower 2	U+F5CD for upper 2
U+F5CE for lower 3	U+F5CF for upper 3
U+F5D0 for lower 4	U+F5D1 for upper 4
U+F5D2 for lower 5	U+F5D3 for upper 5
U+F5D4 for lower 6	U+F5D5 for upper 6
U+F5D6 for lower 7	U+F5D7 for upper 7
U+F5D8 for lower 8	U+F5D9 for upper 8
U+F5DA for lower 9	U+F5DB for upper 9

Tested with LibreOffice 6.4.7.2 (x86); OS: Windows 6.1.

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[LeroyG]

Recommended ligatures from W3C:

U+F5F9 is 2/4 time signature
U+F5FA is 2/2 time signature
U+F5FB is 3/2 time signature
U+F5FC is 3/4 time signature
U+F5FD is 3/8 time signature
U+F5FE is 4/4 time signature
U+F5FF is 5/4 time signature
U+F600 is 5/8 time signature
U+F601 is 6/4 time signature
U+F602 is 6/8 time signature
U+F603 is 7/8 time signature
U+F604 is 9/8 time signature
U+F605 is 12/8 time signature

[LeroyG]

You can compose…

I have not seen this in musical scripts.