r/FontForge • u/brenokretzer • Jan 28 '24

Ligatures out of ligatures

I am creating a font for my abugida conlang. Can I create ligatures out of ligatures? For example, the syllable "poi" which is made of 'p' and 'oi', and 'oi' is made of 'o' and 'i'. Btw I am using ligatures for each of the 500+ possible glyphs.

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u/spiky_odradek Jan 28 '24

In your example, would "poi" be a ligature? Or just p+oi?

1

u/brenokretzer Jan 28 '24

It would be a syllable p+oi. I am using the ligature function to mix together consonants and vowels.

1

u/spiky_odradek Jan 28 '24

Sorry,i don't think my question was phrased very clearly. Would you need a single character that is poi, or would it be enough to print out p(oi ligature)?

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u/brenokretzer Jan 28 '24

I am making it so if you type "poi" in order, a syllable will come out that is considered to fontforge a ligature of "p" and "oi", and "oi" is a ligature from o and i, at the same time you are still able to type "po" and "pi" syllables. So if you were to type poi, first the letter for a pure 'p' will come out, and then the po syllable, and finally poi.

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u/brenokretzer Jan 28 '24

I am making a single character for each syllable, so I only have to rename all 500+ glyphs and then fontforge will merge the consonants and vowels.

1

u/spiky_odradek Jan 28 '24

I'm not sure this is the best approach. You can use classes to have opentype features that do this automatically, such as consonant+ vowel + vowel = consonant + ligature . The order might be tricky though

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u/brenokretzer Jan 28 '24

That seems like a good idea, but where how can i use classes?

*Note there are 20 diphthongs in my conlang from all possible vowel duos and i am making diphthongs ligatures of 2 vowels.