Kerning help

[elipsett]

I've asked several questions here, received advice, viewed tutorials, tried multiple times, and still cannot figure out how to get pair adjustment working on a graphic font.
I've created a test font with only two characters, one and two.
In theory, entering 12 should produce a single character, but it doesn't. It shows the first character, and then the second, as if kerning is entirely off.

Since kerning works in other fonts it should work here, too.

Can anyone fix this text font, and tell me how you fixed it?
The actual font will have to be able to be outlined in Illustrator, viewed in Acrobat, etc., just like normal fonts.

Thank you.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

The font works in Serif PagePlus X9, if kerning is enabled.

There are better ways than using kerning if your aim is to overlap two glyphs to make one. Look at combining diacritical marks in other fonts.

[elipsett]

I need to make about 500 glyphs.
My understanding of diacriticals is that they can be combined with base characters to create new glyphs within the font, occupying a codespace.
I am trying to find a method of creating a glyph composed of two part, printed in exactly the same location, as a single glyph.

If this pair adjustment (kerning) method can be used to generate glyphs on the fly, and those glyphs can be used normally in Word, Illustrator, Acrobat, etc., then I could make all the needed glyphs quite easily.
If I need to define each glyph individually I will have to make about 500 of them.

For example, if I needed to make new glyphs for "(" and every letter, pair adjustment would allow me to specify it one time, with "(" kerned to the class of all letters. If I need to design each glyph separately, I need to make a new glyph for every pair.

Can diacriticals be used in this way, to generate characters on the fly, and not create them within the font?