How to make a combining diacritical mark glyph?

[fumiko]

I just need 1 character to be added: V́ (It's the letter V with a acute above), but I'm really confused by the complicated OpenType compiling stuffs. Could anyone please help me with that? What do I have to do to make a combining diacritical mark glyph?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Making the glyph is the easy bit — copy the V and the acute accent in the Glyph overview, open a new blank glyph and paste. You don't need to use any OpenType features.

The hard part is knowing which code-point to use (I don't see v acute in any Unicode character set). In that case, you should assign it to any convenient code-point in the Private Use Area.

The next hard bit is figuring out how users will type it when using your font.

That is where OpenType features can be a help — if the user types ´ followed by V, then an OpenType feature could make the substitution automatically. However, not all applications support OpenType features. So tell us more about your intention for this font.

[fumiko]

I'd like to edit a font for Photoshop using. The character should be easily and properly pasted, not have some damn look like this: V́. My Photoshop version has some trouble dealing with OTF files, though, so I need the font as TTF, with OpenType features, just like popular font such Times New Roman or Arial.

[León Fridsma]

You can probably do this the easiest by defining this as a ligature. Simply create a new glyph as Bhikkhu Pesala suggested above and name it Vacute, set your OpenType export settings to "Custom script" and use this script:

Code: Select all

script latn {
  feature Ligatures;
}

feature Ligatures liga {
  lookup Ligatures;
}

lookup Ligatures {
  sub acute V -> Vacute;
}

Note that you can also replace or add "sub V acute -> Vacute;" if you want users to type the V before the acute

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Duplicate post on using Volt removed. It can be found in the Type Design Forum