Composite glyphs are made out of “soft links” to one or more other glyphs - usually, but not limited to, a base character and one or more diacritical marks that are placed above and/or below the base character. Composite glyphs are supported by the TrueType based outline format, but will be decomposed on exporting a font with CFF based outlines.

Note: most Latin based composites can be generated through the Complete Composites feature.

Create composite glyphs

You can create a composite glyph when you are editing an empty glyph in a Glyph panel. To add a composite glyph member select Glyph from the Insert menu. To add one or more glyphs as composite glyph members first copy glyphs from the Font panel and then paste them into a Glyph panel that contains an empty glyph or a composite glyph.

Move selected glyph members

You can change the position of each of the used glyphs within the Glyph panel.

To constrain a selection so it moves only horizontally or vertically, press Shift as you drag the selection. Press Alt to ignore the snap to grid and snap to guidelines features.

Transformations

Besides moving glyph members, it is possible to perform operations like scale and rotation through the Transform panel.

Duplicate selected glyph members

To copy selected composite glyph members to a new position, hold down the Ctrl key as you drag the selection. Hold the Alt key to ignore the snap to grid and snap to guidelines features. Hold down the Shift key to move only in vertical or horizontal direction. Any combination of these keys is allowed.

Replace a selected glyph member

You can easily replace a composite glyph member with another glyph. Within the Glyph panel right-click a glyph member, and click Replace.

Convert to simple glyph

To convert a composite glyph to a simple glyph select the glyph in the Font panel or in the Glyph panel and select Make Simple from the Edit menu.

Join composite glyph members

If composite glyph members intersect such as with C cedilla, Get Union of Contours on the Glyph toolbar will convert the composite glyph to a simple glyph and join intersecting contours into one contour.