A new character was added for the Turkish Lira, Currency Symbol, when Unicode 6.2 was released. This may be required by anyone doing business with Turkey, and obviously required if doing business in Turkey, so you might like to add the symbol to your fonts. Design on Wikipedia
Below are a couple of designs from my fonts, Kabala and Cankama, compared to the pound sterling sign.
If you intend to add it to a lot of fonts, or to all future fonts, you might like to update CompositeData.xml (make a backup first in case of errors) to add a definition for Turkish Lira. This speeds up the design process. Complete Composites will insert a pound sterling sign at an empty glyph if it is mapped to code-point 8378 (or added using Insert Characters), using the same metrics for side-bearings and advance width. Make it simple, then modify the glyph as you wish, to make it suitable for the Turkish Lira design.
If you look at any of the Unicode Charts, its says: “The shapes of the reference glyphs used in these code charts are not prescriptive.” In other words, the font designer can draw the glyphs in any way that he or she thinks users will recognise. Not being Turkish, I cannot say if the designs are “right” or not, but in my opinion the £ ₤ and Turkish Lria should all look similar.
The Technical Specification on this page is highly prescriptive, which might make users think there’s only one way to design it, but I think it should match the Typeface. It is, after all, used in text with other characters as are all currency symobls, It is not like the Estimated Sign, which has no bold or italic variants.
How would you write it with a calligraphic pen, for a font like Embassy Script?
I think I would write it with a varying stroke weight, like the pound sign in that font. In that particular case there is no question about the upward curve of the bottom stroke, but point taken!
