Problems solved by OpenType
summary
Live demo shows concrete wins: using optical sizing and variable-font axes to swap glyph detail at different sizes, switching numerals between old‑style and lining for prose vs technical text, enabling tabular numbers and slashed zeros for tables, applying font-variant-position and the OpenType feature scientific inferiors for real superscripts, and using size-adjust / ascent-override to match fallback/code fonts. A web tool "whatcanmyfontdo" analyzes fonts and outputs the exact CSS used — the examples work in the browser.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (36)
- 0:00Introduction to OpenType features
- 1:11What are OpenType layout features
- 5:03Kerning and ligatures explained
- 8:17Alternate glyphs and stylistic sets
- 10:55Essential OpenType features for languages
- 13:01Variable fonts and their advantages
- 15:30Dark mode and optical sizing
- 16:54Creative possibilities with OpenType
- 17:57Color fonts and their integration
- 18:17Two ways to use OpenType features
- 20:25Live coding a newspaper layout
- 21:28Optical sizing in typography
- 22:10Enabling discretionary ligatures
- 23:14Old-style vs lining numbers
- 24:40Small caps for abbreviations
- 25:45Proper superscript formatting
- 27:30Diagonal fractions in technical text
- 28:12Scientific inferiors for chemical formulas
- 28:55Tabular numbers for data alignment
- 30:40Slashed zeros and text alignment
- 31:21Case-sensitive forms for symbols
- 32:26Size adjustment for fallback fonts
- 33:51Code block typography adjustments
- 35:34Icon sizing with font metrics
- 36:40Vertical alignment of icons
- 38:02Analyzing fonts with WhatCanMyFontDo
- 40:19Q&A on OpenType features and resources
- 42:04OpenType adoption and education gap
- 43:29Font loading and feature detection
- 44:54Superscript reset and font synthesis
- 45:35OpenType feature wish list
- 46:41OpenType as programmable fonts
- 47:03Default OpenType settings for content
- 47:46OpenType in design tools like Figma
- 48:29Education and awareness of OpenType
- 49:11Control and trust in typography design
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