The best method for syllabaries?

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Hi all, I hope I’m posting this in the correct place. Firstly, a little bit of background:

I’m creating my own constructed script for personal use. This script has some 90-odd characters, due to the fact that it is a syllabary, with one glyph for every syllable. The glyphs are largely irregular from one another, differing even if they share the same vowel or consonant.

My question is if Font Creator can create fonts that have a glyph assigned to two keys. What I mean by this is that I want to type two keystrokes but have one glyph appear on screen. For example: Let’s say that the syllable ‘ne’ is represented by a symbol that looks like :exclamation: (Just for the purposes of the example.)

I occasionally type in Hangul (Korean), which has characters arranged in syllable blocks. For example, the syllable “han” is written: 한. ㅎ = H, ㅏ = A, and ㄴ = N. See, when I type ‘han’, it doesn’t make ㅎㅏㄴ, but 한. So I’m guessing that the computer can interpret that ‘h’ + ‘a’ + ‘n’ makes a whole new glyph, not three separate ones, which is what I want to do. Am I just confusing you further? If so, then ignore this paragraph. :mrgreen:

Bottom line, I want to be able to type the keys ‘n’ + ‘e’ and have appear on screen :exclamation:. Is this possible? If not is there some sort of workaround? I don’t want to have to press ctrl+7890 or something for every character, though.

I see a lot of posts about composite glyphs, but I don’t think that is what I want. By the sound of it it’s simply two glyphs put together to make a new glyph, assigned to one key. I want one glyph to appear when two specific keys are struck in a certain order.

Anyway, thank you for reading my post up until this far! I hope that I am asking a valid question and that this hasn’t been answered yet, but through my initial browsing it doesn’t seem to have been answered yet. Thanks in advance for answering!

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What you need is OpenType glyph substitutions, which FontCreator doesn’t currently support. You can create all of the glyphs that you need then add the OpenType tables using another application.

Adding OpenType Features.

Ask again here if you don’t follow, but its beyond the scope of support for FontCreator. VOLT can also be used, but I found the method used in that tutorial thread is easier.

Anyone using your font will also need an application that supports OpenType such as InDesign or Word 2010.

Another route is to use Autocorrect to replace whole words without using OpenType at all. For example if n+e = № then autocorrect would have to replace “done” with “do№” and “next” with “№xt” etc.

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Thanks for such a fast response!

I see, okay. Thanks for the link, I’ll try to follow it, it seems straightforward enough. If not I’ll come back here.

That could also be an option, I’ll try it if the first doesn’t work.

Anyway, thanks for the advice!

EDIT: I’m unable to buy a program that supports those features, so I’ve decided to use the Auto-Correct workaround. I’ve downloaded OpenOffice Writer and will use this program for typing in my script, so that my MS Word Auto-Correct dictionary is not affected.

The problem is that I don’t think that there are enough glyph spaces. I probably have somewhere close to 270 unique characters. Font Maker gives me an apparent default of some 200-odd glyph spaces when I choose “New Font”. I know I can add more glyphs, but then what keys would I use to type them out?

Sorry if I’m not being very technical, but I have virtually no expertise whatsoever in this field. Thanks in advance for your responses.

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Insert Characters to add as many glyphs as you need to the Private Use Area. Since you’re planning on using Autocorrect you don’t need to type them out at all.

For example, we can type effort and autocorrect it to effort. Note that this is not the same text as the f+f is replace with ff ligature.

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Ah, I see. I’ll go and try it now and post here again if I have any more questions.
Thanks very much for all the help and advice! :mrgreen: