The Tools Behind Yapiri —
Inkscape, FontForge & Keyman Developer

Creating a new script is not just an act of imagination. It is also an act of craftsmanship. Every curve, every connection, every key mapping had to be shaped by hand using tools that are themselves acts of generosity from the open-source world.

Three tools stood beside me throughout the journey of Yapiri: Inkscape, FontForge, and Keyman Developer. Together they turned a personal vision into something the community can actually use today.

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Inkscape — Where the Glyphs Were Born

Inkscape is a free, powerful vector graphics editor. For Yapiri, it became the digital sketchbook where every character first took shape.

I began with rough ideas — sometimes drawn on paper or on an Android tablet — then brought them into Inkscape. The Bézier curve tools gave me precise control over the elegant, modern forms I wanted while still honoring the rhythmic, flowing feeling of Kokborok phonemes.

Inkscape’s strengths for script design:

• Excellent SVG export that FontForge reads cleanly
• Precise node editing for consistent stroke width and curves
• Ability to work at high zoom levels without losing quality
• Cross-platform — I even used it on Android tablets during travel
• Completely free and actively maintained

Many of the final glyph shapes in Yapiri still carry traces of decisions made first in Inkscape — the balance of the vowels, the distinctive terminals on certain consonants, the visual harmony across the set.

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FontForge — Turning Drawings into a Living Font

Once the glyphs existed as clean vector outlines, they needed to become a real font file that applications could understand. That is where FontForge entered the story.

FontForge is the veteran open-source font editor. It is not always the most beautiful interface, but it is incredibly powerful and completely free. For Yapiri it handled the heavy lifting:

• Importing SVG outlines from Inkscape
• Mapping every glyph to its Private Use Area Unicode codepoint (U+E000–U+E02D)
• Setting font metrics, baseline, and spacing
• Creating the necessary OpenType tables
• Generating the final .ttf and .woff2 files used on the website and in documents
• Fine-tuning kerning and glyph positioning

FontForge also allowed me to do the patient, detailed work of centering glyphs, adjusting side bearings, and ensuring the font renders cleanly at both large display sizes and small text sizes. It is the tool that turned artistic drawings into a professional, usable typeface.

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Keyman Developer — Giving the Script a Voice on Keyboards

A beautiful font is only half the story. People also need an easy way to type the glyphs. That is the role of Keyman Developer, created by SIL International.

Keyman is the gold standard for creating keyboards for minority and indigenous languages. For Yapiri I used it to build:

• A desktop keyboard with a logical, phoneme-grouped layout
• Touch layouts optimized for Android phones and tablets
• The .kmp package that users can install with a single click
• Latin “hints” so people learning the script can still see the sounds

Keyman Developer gave me visual editors for both desktop and mobile layouts, powerful rule-based input methods, and excellent documentation. The resulting keyboard feels natural to Kokborok speakers because the layout respects the sound system of the language rather than forcing a Latin or Bengali pattern onto it.

Without Keyman, Yapiri would have remained a beautiful but impractical set of pictures. With it, people can actually write in their own script on everyday devices.

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The Workflow That Emerged

This pipeline — Inkscape → FontForge → Keyman — became a reliable creative loop. I could go back and refine a glyph in Inkscape, re-import into FontForge, regenerate the font, and immediately test it in the Keyman keyboard.

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Why These Tools Matter for Indigenous Scripts

Many communities around the world want to create or revive their own writing systems. Commercial font software is expensive. Many keyboard tools are closed or limited.

Inkscape, FontForge, and Keyman Developer are completely free, actively maintained by generous communities, and powerful enough for serious work. They lower the barrier so that passion and linguistic knowledge — not money — become the limiting factors.

For the Tiprasa people and for other indigenous communities, these tools represent a form of digital self-determination. We can shape our own letters, our own input methods, and our own digital future without asking permission from large corporations.

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Final Thought

Yapiri exists because of many things — vision, persistence, community feedback, and the quiet generosity of open-source tools. Inkscape gave the glyphs their form. FontForge gave them a home in the digital world. Keyman Developer gave them a voice on keyboards and phones.

These three companions turned an idea into something tangible, usable, and alive. They are proof that with the right tools in generous hands, even small communities can create writing systems that will last for generations.

If you are dreaming of creating or reviving a script for your own language, know this: the tools are waiting. They are free. They are powerful. And they have already helped bring one more beautiful writing system into the world.

May they serve your language as faithfully as they have served Yapiri.