I am trying to adapt the Korean alphabet Hangul so it can write the phonetic sounds of other languages, but this seems to require a keyboard driver that allows characters within a syllable to be put in unusual places (e.g. "att" or "yui"). The only workarounds I know of are a forced kerning (as in InDesign) or a digital image of the character block, neither of which is practical for extended texts. Any ideas what can be done about this?
Again, thanks for your continued interest. The issue is not a problem that can be addressed with a font. It is a function of the way the OS's System Preference of "Language & Region" (hereafter L&R) controls the display of a font. When L&R is set to Korean, certain additional non-English behaviors are included. This seems to be a necessary component of the Korean driver for L&R because of the way Korean is written.
Korean words are spelled using characters arranged in "syllable blocks" of (at maximum) 2x2. The L&R driver has to know when to put a syllable on top, when to put them on the bottom, and when to move on to the next block. Part of this is controlled by "rules" in the Korean language itself. Certain characters are not permitted in the bottom half of the syllable block, so typing that character (in the reassigned keyboard) automatically puts it in the next syllable block. This is kind of analogous to having the Latin keyboard driver having a built-in spell check that you can't disable. For example, it would be like the driver refusing to allow you to type any English words with three consecutive consonants. So if you were to type "bubbble" the driver would force a space between the second and third "b" since that kind of word construction is not allowed in English. I'm looking for a way to either override this function of the driver, or install one that allows for nonstandard Korean spellings.
Xavplex wrote: The issue is not a problem that can be addressed with a font. It is a function of the way the OS's System Preference of "Language & Region" (hereafter L&R) controls the display of a font.
Language and Region preferences normally in not involved with how any language is displayed on the screen. You can set the preferences to English or any other language and still type Korean any place you want.
Korean input and display is governed by KoreanIM.app located in System > Library > Input Methods, which gets activated when you choose one of the Korean input sources in system preferences > keyboard > input sources. Unfortunately I do not know how this app works. But one possibility is that Korean fonts take the input of individual elements by the keyboard and in response generate the proper combined form (look up Open Type fonts for info). Another is that there is a sort of catalog system working. For info on that, see
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/create-and-use-your-own-input-source-on-mac-mchlp2866/mac
I think you would probably have to make a custom font to get the kind of display you want. There are several Mac font editors, of which a free one called Fontforge.
PS for some more info on the role of fonts in generating Korean script, see
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/script-development/hangul
Thank you for your reply. The goal is to be able to type forms which are not on that list, because they are outdated and/or they do not occur in Korean naturally. For example, to write Ojibwe using Hangul the syllable "kaz" would be required; this necessitates both the usage of an outdated Korean letter (jamo), "bansiot," and placing it in a location where it cannot occur, even in Old Korean. Other situations require only unavailable combinations of modern jamo, such as an "oe" using "yo" instead of "o."
PS Are you really running macOS Sierra from 2016? Or the current Big Sur?
Korean keyboard driver
