Diacritics and font changing commands

Question

See the following code.

%!TeX Program = lualatex
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\newfontfamily\cmuserif{CMU-serif}
\newfontfamily\charissil{CharisSIL}

\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{ll}
CMU Serif: & {\cmuserif l̠}\\
Charis SIL: & {\charissil l̠}\\
CMU Serif and Charis SIL: & {\cmuserif l\charissil ̠}\\
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

Both of these fonts have different shapes for this particular character and the one found in CMU-serif is very weird and looks inappropriate. I wanted to use the l from CMU-serif and the diacritic from the CharisSIL font, but it doesn't seem to produce correct shape in the output. Why is this happening and how to print that character correctly?

Answer 1

You have to go the hard way, because you cannot combine characters from different fonts, as far as I know.

%!TeX Program = lualatex
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}

\newfontfamily\cmuserif{CMU Serif}
\newfontfamily\charissil{Charis SIL}

\newcommand{\minusbelow}[1]{{%
  \ooalign{%
    #1\cr
    \hidewidth\raisebox{-\fontchardp\font`#1}{\charissil\char"00A0\char"0320}\hidewidth\cr
  }%
}}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{@{}ll}
CMU Serif: & {\cmuserif l̠}\\
Charis SIL: & {\charissil l̠}\\
CMU Serif and Charis SIL: & {\cmuserif l\charissil ̠}\\
CMU Serif and Charis SIL: & {\cmuserif \minusbelow{l}}
\end{tabular}

\minusbelow{m}\minusbelow{A}\minusbelow{g}

\end{document}