Re: Questions on creation of glyphs

[jcupitt gmail com]

Hi Ferdinand,

> > I want to create a small set (say
> > 5-10 symbols) of custom glyphs and want these symbols to be
> > part of the alphabet of a fictional language. I also want to
> > assign unused unicode values to these symbols and want these
> > symbols to appear on my application as well as the terminal
> > when I press specific keys.

Here's how font rendering works in gtk on linux (I hope I have this right):

- gtk uses Cairo to draw on the screen
- Cairo uses Pango to do draw text
- Pango does layout and final rendering, but uses freetype2 to do the
rasterisation from the font file
- freetype2 uses fontconfig to find font files from names like "sans 12"

Other platforms are slightly different. On Windows and OS X, pango
uses the host drawing system to rasterise glyphs.

So to answer your question, you need to make a new font containing
your new glyphs. There are quite a few font editing systems, I've not
used any myself but I understand fontforge is popular:

http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/

Take an existing open font and add your new glyphs somewhere.

Next, install the font, details will vary with your system. On linux
you can bundle the font with your app and use the fontconfig env vars
to add it to the search system, l I think.

Finally, depending on where you added it to the font, you should be
able to type your characters with various key combinations. You can
also edit key maps I think, though I've never tried.

John