Featural alternative to international phonetic alphabet

Goals:

• the alphabet is featural, meaning each element should represent some phonological feature of a sound,
• symbols for most frequently used symbols should be as simple as possible,
• the character elements must have the same line width so that they can be written by hand with a pen.

Build and run

Requirements:

• C++20 compiler,
• CMake version 3.30 or higher,
• xelatex compiler (XeTeX).

We include fonts under Open Font License (fonts directory):

• Doulos SIL,
• Noto Sans Korean,
• CMU Serif Roman.

To get a PDF file with the alphabet, run

./build.sh

It will create build directory and out directory with output PDF file.

Language utility

Language utility has two commands: table and symbol:

• table <rows> <columns>, where rows is the list of phoneme parameters separated by ,. E.g. table "dental,alveolar" "trill;voiceless,trill;voiced".
• symbol <descriptors>, where descriptors is the list of symbol element descriptors. E.g. symbol vc hc.

Code and commit style

All C++ code should be formatted with clang-format, configuration file is .clang-format. All Python code should be formatted with Black, default configuration with --line-length 80.