Fonts made up out of shapes

[richard280166]

Many fonts during the design process I make up using various components. Take for example lowercase n & m. I would construct the left hand stem with serifs. Next I would add another component featuring the right hand part of the n. These two components are still separate so I can increase or decrease the spacing between them. Duplicating the right hand side of the n I add this to the right side of the n to form the m. However as these items are overlapping I get the white overlap effect. I know I can combine these but the shape becomes one and I have lost my ability to fine tune the components. Convert to TT works but creates more nodes...
Can it be done to retain the individual components but for the glyph to display or generate correctly? Thanks Richard

[petarpetrenko]

Why don't you save working version of the font as .GFS? This way you can have all parts separated and combine them only when you want to save it as a font.