Translate string into TIPA

Question

I am writing a project about phonetics using the tipa package. The problem is, I need to publish two separate versions of my project using different phonetic notation standards. When considering the fact that there is, fortunately, a one-to-one correlation between the symbols of these two standards, I would like to know if there is a way to convert from the one standard to the other without having to write everything twice?

Furthermore, since I am only using a small selection of the symbols available in tipa, I would like to use a custom syntax which eases typing.

What I need to create is a command phone in which I can type phonetic writing using my own custom syntax. The phone command is then supposed to convert this into the tipa syntax. If that is possible, all I have to do to convert between these two standards is to change this command.

An example: Since I'm using \textraiseglotstop and \textsubarch{5} a lot, I would phone to replace ? with \textraiseglotstop and R with \textsubarch{5}.

If somebody can provide me with a command that enables me to make lots of substring conversions without causing conflicts, I think that would suffice. Other suggestions are also very welcome, though.

Answer 1

The simplest way to do this would be to use macros for the variant characters and use a conditional to switch between them. Here's a simple example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tipa}
\newif\ifregularIPA
\regularIPAtrue
\newcommand*{\GS}{\ifregularIPA\textglotstop\else\textsuperscript{?}\fi}
\begin{document}
\begin{IPA}
\GS aral

\regularIPAfalse
\GS aral
\end{IPA}
\end{document}

For the different versions of the document you would set the switch once in the preamble. For making a table of conversions you can set the switch inside a group.