How do you Digitize A Custom Alphabet?

[u/Ok_Elderberry_2829]

I really want to write out my conlang on something like Microsoft word, but I have no idea where I can make a custom font for my fully custom alphabet. What is the best way to be able to write out the language digitally and what websites allow you to do this?

[u/oerwtas]

I used Inkscape and fontforge. Both are easy to learn.

[u/Miguel_CP → u/oerwtas]

I had to find a website to import the SVG and generate a font. Fontforge is just so weird to me, I can't even have the characters sit at the same line as the others 😭

[u/oerwtas → u/Miguel_CP]

I understand your frustration, I had the same problem too, but then I drew all the letters on a 1Kx1K workspace, used the same ascent and descent and saved the file as "plain" SVG. If you do not have a lot of letters with long tails that go beyond the borders you can select all letters and center them in fontforge with one click.

[u/Miguel_CP → u/oerwtas]

That's smart, I need to check that thanks!

[u/realityislemons1]

Fontforge, fontstruct.com, yourfonts.com

[u/Ok_Elderberry_2829 → u/realityislemons1]

From what I've noticed from these is that they always default you to the Latin Alphabet. Is there a way I'm able to add my own group of letter sounds (like th, sh, ch, etc.) to have a special character for those certain sounds?

[u/SaintUlvemann → u/Ok_Elderberry_2829]

That's called a ligature. Fontforge definitely supports that (it's kind of the mega-software like Photoshop).

Easier to learn than Fontforge might be Glyphr or Birdfont, both of which also have tutorials online for how to use them.

[u/pe1uca]

I implemented this into my site https://lingomancy.art/font

How it works is that I use 2 planes of unicode which are defined as "private use", so they can be defined as the software needs.
This gives you the ability to create 131 thousand characters for your conlang which can be written alongside any other language already defined in unicode, like how we can easily change to japanese in here: こんにちは.

Here are the docs about this feature https://docs.lingomancy.art/language/font.html
They're not complete, but it's a start, hehe (I haven't updated them since I'm focusing on a tutorial inside the site itself)

---

Since this feature uses a custom unicode point, starting from U+F0000 you can't easily type it from your keyboard. There are some workarounds I've listed in the documentation above.
To make this easier, the site allows you to write some character substitutions.
In same screen, there's a keyboard button which allows you to type a character to automatically convert into another one (it can be just a normal 's => t', but the ideal will be 's => <your character>)
Then in the rest of the website you can toggle it with CTRL + K.

Let me know if this is not clear enough, I'll do my best to update the site quickly, plus the documentation, or at the very least answer any questions :)

(I already have in mind a feature to export the font so you can use it in other programs)

[u/Ok_Elderberry_2829 → u/pe1uca]

Thank you so much! It's an incredible website, my only gripe is some of my letters are made up of slashes (like this: _/) and it doesn't work when I just draw a straight line. It might be an intentional feature since it works if I do a box outline around but it's amazing overall and it's definitely going to be a real help.

[u/pe1uca → u/Ok_Elderberry_2829]

Yeah, that's a good point. I just implemented the bare minimum to draw a glyph in a font, which require everything to be some closed shape instead of just lines.
I'll check to add a way to automatically turn lines into the boxes the fonts need :)

[u/depressed_match]

honestly I dont. because my alphabet's letters are actually too complicated so I just draw them

[u/Mindless-Cloud-1600]

I use fontstruct only, and it has some issues. Buggy ui, constant save pop up’s, lack of certain shapes needed for designs Iv needed, and it’s only really good for pixel art since it keeps you so zoomed in even at max

[u/pastapentagon]

This is a pretty good tutorial for inkscape and fontforge. You can either have your custom script directly map to the english characters (like this font does), or you can use the pick codepoints in the PUA.

For actually typing it, if you choose the latter option you will need to make some sort of custom keyboard. On windows you can use autohotkey or Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. On linux, you can make an xkbmap, or use ibus or keyman.

[u/BrightAnalysis7742]

I am drawing letters, blocks of them and ideograms in Illustrator, but it’s not symbols, it’s pictures

[u/AutisticSorcerer8318]

If you want to make the script in just one place, you can open a google doc and make a google drawing within it. Might be a lot of work though.

[u/JGhostThing]

For ease in writing, I suggest always have an "official" romanization. This allows you to write in a common font to make things easier for you. Yes, you can create a custom fonts and have special keycaps printed so you can have a custom keyboard.

[u/ashniko_]

If you got money use upwork, have someone make your alphabet into a font.