How do I write ligature names to include special symbols like ' or ~?

1

I am using Glyphs 3. For a manuscript I’ve written, I am creating a syllabary font for Quechua (which is not typically written using a syllabary and uses a latin alphabet like English with additional characters). Because I’m creating a syllabary, I am using ligatures to represent the individual characters (i.e., one for KA, another for KI, a third for KU, etc.). My problem comes with the special symbols.

For example, I can get K_A and K_H_A to work no problem. But to represent K’A, I have tried K_quoteright_A and K_quotesingle_A, but neither the glyphs program nor Microsoft Word registers the correct keystrokes for the ligature. What is the correct way to name those? (I did by the way create quote right and quote single glyphs in case they needed to be present in the file even though they’ll always be replaced by a ligature.)

By the same token, how would I name ÑA, ÑI, and ÑU? N_tilde_A?

Thanks. I know this is all rather basic stuff.

2

What do you mean, it’s not recognised as a combination? Have you written the feature code?

You can name your ligatures K_quoteright_A.liga and Glyphs will add the necessary substitution to the liga feature, once you click Update in the Feature tab.

3

The default name for Ñ is Ntilde, so it would just be Ntilde_A.

4

No such thing. There’s no (direct) connection between keystrokes and glyphs in a font. Keystrokes produce, through the appropriate keyboard layout, characters in the shape of Unicode values. These Unicode values can be picked up by the font, because a font needs to have at least some glyphs with Unicode values attached to them. Glyphs without Unicode values such as ligatures need to be accessed (or should be made accessible) through OpenType features that convert glyphs with a Unicode value to glyphs without.

Plus, keep in mind that the characters resulting from the keyboard input can still get changed by the layout engine before they get passed to the font. For instance, Word changes the straight dumb quotes to curly quotes in certain situations, so you need to account for that, IOW you need to have glyphs for all Unicode values involved in the chain:

  1. K’A ligature: K_quoteright_A
  2. All glyphs involved in the ligature: K quoteright A
  3. All glyphs with Unicodes that get converted by the layout engine: quotesingle

You may need to do your own research because not every app does the same thing. So YMMV. Helpful tools: UnicodeChecker app’s tools for text analysis (Cmd-2).

Consider reading the Unicode tutorial.

5

Thank you all for your help. You fixed my problems and anticipated some of my next questions. Thank you.

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