Fonts and Typography OpenType Features and Variable Fonts 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is an OpenType font format?
- A cross-platform font format supporting advanced typographic features and large character sets (Correct answer)
- A font format exclusive to Adobe software
- A format for black-and-white bitmap fonts only
- A format limited to Latin characters
Correct answer: A cross-platform font format supporting advanced typographic features and large character sets
OpenType is a scalable, cross-platform font format developed by Microsoft and Adobe that supports advanced typographic features and can contain over 65,000 glyphs.
Question 2: What OpenType feature enables automatic substitution of standard letter pairs with combined ligature glyphs?
- liga (Standard Ligatures) (Correct answer)
- kern (Kerning)
- smcp (Small Caps)
- onum (Old-style Numerals)
Correct answer: liga (Standard Ligatures)
The `liga` OpenType feature tag enables standard ligature substitution, automatically replacing specific letter combinations like 'fi' and 'fl' with their ligature glyphs.
Question 3: What does the OpenType 'smcp' feature do?
- Substitutes lowercase letters with small capital versions (Correct answer)
- Applies subscript positioning to numbers
- Increases tracking uniformly
- Changes the font to a condensed variant
Correct answer: Substitutes lowercase letters with small capital versions
The `smcp` (Small Caps) feature replaces lowercase letters with specially drawn small capital glyphs that match the cap height more harmoniously than scaled-down capitals.
Question 4: What are 'variable font axes' in OpenType variable fonts?
- Dimensions of variation like weight, width, or optical size that can be adjusted continuously (Correct answer)
- The X and Y grid alignment of font glyphs
- The baseline position of a font
- The number of supported scripts in a font
Correct answer: Dimensions of variation like weight, width, or optical size that can be adjusted continuously
Variable font axes are named dimensions of variation (e.g., weight, width, slant) along which a font can be smoothly interpolated using CSS or design tools.
Question 5: Which CSS property is used to control variable font axes?
- font-variation-settings (Correct answer)
- font-feature-settings
- font-display
- font-variant
Correct answer: font-variation-settings
`font-variation-settings` allows direct control of variable font axes using four-letter axis tags and numeric values, such as `'wght' 650`.
Question 6: What is the 'opsz' axis in a variable font?
- Optical size — adjusts letterform details optimized for different sizes (Correct answer)
- Open spacing — controls letter spacing
- Oblique slant — controls italic angle
- Old-style — switches to old-style numerals
Correct answer: Optical size — adjusts letterform details optimized for different sizes
The `opsz` (optical size) axis adjusts letterform details automatically for the current type size, adding contrast and detail at large sizes while improving legibility at small sizes.
Fonts and Typography OpenType Features and Variable Fonts 1
What is an OpenType font format?