Before any layout features can be added to a font in VOLT, a few things must be taken care of. When opening a font for the first time, the dialog box below may appear:

This means the font already has OpenType functionality — if you are starting from scratch and are fine with erasing the existing OTL features, click Yes.

Adding scripts and languages

The next step is to add a script and language pair that will contain our OTL features. This tutorial focuses on Latin-based fonts, so after clicking the 'Add Script' button at the bottom of the window, specify the OpenType script name <latn>. VOLT then automatically creates an associated 'default' language (see graphic above) — this is the language we will be adding our OTL features to.

The 'Edit Glyphs' window

Now that we have our script and lanuguage created, it is useful to become familiar with VOLT's 'Edit Glyphs' window (click on the 'Edit Glyphs' button). In this window, the user is able to navigate and search through the font's complete set of glyphs. Each glyph has its own box, which lists the VOLT glyph name (which you can change) and the code point determined by the font's encoding. As you will see, this window will become useful as we begin creating our OTL features.