Trying to create a Conlang with specific parameters

[Kuroiryuu]

I have a font that I'm wanting to make, that the glyphs are corresponding to IPA sets in terms of input. I'm looking for help to see if what I want to do is even possible.

Each character "space" is actually two overlaid on top over each other. Either a 'consonant' with a 'vowel', or the other way around. If there's a vowel first, however, there is a diacritic mark added below the vowel to denote it comes first. I'm confused as to how to do this part. I'm also confused as to how to keep this pairing strictly to that. Say, with the word "and", it would be (vowel + consonant w/ diacritic) (an + d), but with "sand" it would be (consonant + vowel, consonant + consonant) (sa + n + d). Consonants never overlap, and vowels never overlap.

Also, is there any (possibly easy) way to look forward and backwards in a set to change the glyph possibly see two or three characters ahead to determine what a glyph should change to? I've tried using the contextual alternatives, but it seems that only goes one back and in front, and as I previously stated, I'm basing this on IPA sets, so almost everything is one or two characters in themselves, maybe three in a rare case. Some glyphs might be represented by five or six sets of characters. One glyph as it is can be represented by eɪ, ɜr, ər, əˌr, or ə depending.

Stress marks ˈ and ˌ in front of consonants, and for the most part ː behind vowels, would be ignored and produce the glyph like it wasn't there, however, it might change a vowel to a diacritic version according to the previous placement. So, for example, ˈfeɪθfəl (faithful) would produce f + eɪ θ +f ə + l

Is all of this even possible, or am I chasing a pipe dream? I'm unaware of how to use scripts, I'm lost when it comes to those. If someone could help enough for me to understand, maybe I can build off of that for the rest. Sorry if this is asking quite a lot, I know it sounds complicated, but it's mostly figuring out how to keep the structure confined to pairs of glyphs, and the contextual diacritics.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

It is not a pipe-dream, but it requires some careful study.

This simple example on Contextual Alternates will give you an example of what is possible.

[Kuroiryuu]

I feel like that's only partially answering my questions, which I was already aware of the contexual alternates, I've been trying to get them to work, but as I said, sometimes I'm needing more than one character backtrack or lookahead.

[PJMiller]

Sounds like a job for Chained Contexts but be warned they are complex.

Good Luck.

[PJMiller]

Sorry, I had the exact page in the manual but when I follow the link it just opens the manual at the beginning.

It is under "Editing Fonts > Format > OpenType Layout Features > OpenType Designer >"

It seems like there is no way to link to a specific page in the manual.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

It seems like there is no way to link to a specific page in the manual.

Open the link, then click the link at the top of the page to display the relevant page with the index

Display Table of Contents.png (2.93 KiB) Viewed 1753 times

Chained Context

[Kuroiryuu]

Sounds like a job for Chained Contexts but be warned they are complex.

Good Luck.

How would I do this with needing to look back and forward for multiple characters in a sequence, not just one?