Fonts and Typography OpenType Features and Variable Fonts

Question 1

What is an OpenType font format?

Accepted Answer

A cross-platform font format supporting advanced typographic features and large character sets

Answer

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?

Accepted Answer

liga (Standard Ligatures)

Answer

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?

Accepted Answer

Substitutes lowercase letters with small capital versions

Answer

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?

Accepted Answer

Dimensions of variation like weight, width, or optical size that can be adjusted continuously

Answer

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?

Accepted Answer

font-variation-settings

Answer

`font-variation-settings` allows direct control of variable font axes using four-letter axis tags and numeric values, such as `'wght' 650`.

Fonts and Typography Practice Test

Fonts and Typography Practice Test

Fonts and Typography OpenType Features and Variable Fonts