Automatic Diacritics

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1

Hey All!

This may have already been asked but I’d like to know if there is a way to automatically create a diacritic using the letter and the diacritic. For example if I create a letter ‘U’ and an accent ‘`’. Can a glyph be prepared to automatically combine these two glyphs to create a ‘Ù’. Then is it possible for the ‘U’ part of this to automatically change whenever I change the glyph ‘U’?

Thanks!

Blessings,

Jonne

2

Complete Composites does what you want.

The easiest way to add a lot of accented composite glyphs to your font is to first create the base glyphs and the combining accents, then run the Eastern Europe Glyph Transformation script.

If either the base glyph or the accent are modified later, all composite glyphs using that base glyph or that accent are automatically modified to match. Composite glyphs do not contain any outlines, they are just linked to the composite glyph members.

One can also use composites for ¼ ½ ¾ and many other glyphs to reduce the work involved if composite glyph members need to be redesigned. Even the colon and semicolon can be created from comma and period if you wish.

3

As Bhikkhu Pesala suggests, first ensure you have added all needed base, mark and, accented characters.

Then add appropriate anchors to each base and mark, and let Complete Composites Anchor Based do the hard work for you.

You can even set the composites to Auto Attach, so any changes to the anchors in your base or mark glyphs are instantly incorporated in your composite glyph.

More about his topic is explained in this tutorial:
Latin Diacritical Marks – Accents

4

Thank You Bhikkhu Pesala and Erwin for the quick responses!

I’m having trouble understanding what to do from step one, having the base glyph and the accent glyph prepared. From there I’m not sure what to do. The tutorial was not helpful as it seemed to be illustrating step 10 when I haven’t got to step two. Is there as simpler guide to doing this out there? A video tutorial or perhaps just step by simple step instructions that a laymen like me can follow?

Thanks for your patience!
Blessings!
Jonne

5

Erwin,

I have sent you an email containing my font so that you can better understand what I’m trying to do.

Blessings,

Jonne

6
  1. Create the Base Glyphs
  2. Create the combining diacritics
  3. Insert the accented characters if they’re not already there
  4. Complete Composites
    Empty Accented Glyphs.png
    Composite Glyphs.png
    If you open the glyph edit window and enable view anchors from the view menu you can see that FontCreator has added anchors to the base glyph to position the accents.
    Agrave with Anchors.png
7

It will work best if your glyph names have names as explained in the user manual.

E.g.

Character U ($55) should be named:
U

If you have a variant, for example one with a gap, name it:
U.Gap

Don’t include space in your glyph names.

Hope this helps.

8

Hey thanks for the help!

Is there a way to turn an existing glyph into a composite or a ‘copy of’ a glyph, glyph? That way I don’t have to rewrite the classes I’ve made?

Thanks.

Jonne

9

Oh ok, I think I got it. I’m using the FX feature to make copies of glyphs now. Is that correct?

Blessings,

Jonne

10

Hey all!

Is it possible to copy composite glyphs from one font to another?

Thanks!

Jonne

11

No, the latest updates of FontCreator 13 allow you to copy and paste composite glyphs within the same font. If you paste into another font, you will end up with a simple glyph.