I've been meaning to write in response to this, but haven't thought to
prepare anything when I was where the information was. As some rather
desperate expedients have bern proposed, I'll post a sort of preliminary
notice. I can and should do better!
What I'd recommend (on a DOS platform) would be SIL's Encore Fonts package.
This contains a font generating tool (for MS Windows), plus the "fixings,"
three font families - Times-like, Futura(?)-like, and Elite-like, each in
roman, italic, bold roman, and bold italic - each font comprising very
complete symbol sets with broad IPA and other linguistic coverage. Actually,
each "font" consists of four or so files, in order to accomodate all the
symbols. Base characters and diacritics are included separately. There is
also a small Pi (symbols) font. The fonts are available in either TrueType
or PostScript format.
What you do is use the SIL font generator tool (or the separate FontMonger
product, which someone already mentioned) to cut and paste the symbol set you
want. The SIL tool allows you to define and work from a *.CST file which
specifies the combining process.
This combining process is eminently preferable to the cutting and pasting you
have to do if you use a font editor, even starting from an existing font
with most of the right raw materials. Basically you just write a table with
an entry for each symbol in some standard set, e.g., Windows ANSI, that you
want to change, and applying diacritics to a base character is a matter of
listing the base character and diacritics. You can specify some
repositioning of all these pieces if the results of simple overprinting fail
to satisfy you. For example, I'm rather fussy about the siting of nasal
hooks.
The price was c. $70 initially, but I think it has been raised now that
they've completed the non-roman faces and the font generator tool. I don't
recall the current price, though I think it is now c. $100-150.
The address is:
SIL Printing Arts Department
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road
Dallas, TX 75236
U.S.A.
phone: 214-709-2440
fax: 214-709-3387
(I think this is current - I snagged from something old I had on file.)
My main practical discovery so far has been that the art of customizing the
Windows ANSI symbol set is rather different from the art of customizing the
DOS ASCII symbol set, and I am going to have to start over again on my
Omaha-Ponca set! And write some transcribers to convert between the two
arrangements.