Typographic features made possible using
digital typographic systems have solved many the demands placed on computer systems to replicate traditional typography and have expanded the possibilities with many new features. Three systems are in common use:
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...
, devised by
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...
and
Adobe
Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for '' mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of ...
,
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...
's
Apple Advanced Typography
Apple Advanced Typography (AAT) is Apple Inc.'s computer technology for advanced font rendering, supporting internationalization and complex features for typographers, a successor to Apple's little-used QuickDraw GX font technology of the mid- ...
(AAT), and
SIL's
Graphite
Graphite () is a crystalline form of the element carbon. It consists of stacked layers of graphene. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable form of carbon under standard conditions. Synthetic and natural graphite are consumed on la ...
. The lists below provide information about OpenType and AAT features. Graphite does not have a fixed set of features; instead it provides a way for fonts to define their own features.
OpenType typographic features
The OpenType format defines a number of typographic features that a particular font may support. Some software, such as
Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing and page layout designing software application produced by Adobe Inc. and first released in 1999. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers, presentations, b ...
or recent versions of
Lua/
XeTeX, gives users control of these features, for example to enable fancy stylistic capital letters (swash caps) or to choose between ranging (full-height) and non-ranging (old-style, or lower-case) digits. Some web browsers also support OpenType features in accordance with the
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone technolo ...
Fonts Module Level 3 specification, which allows OpenType features to be set directly via the property, or indirectly by means of higher-level mechanisms.
The following tables list the features defined in version 1.8.1 of the OpenType specification. The codes in the "type" column are explained after the tables.
OpenType features may be applicable only to certain language scripts or specific languages, or in certain writing modes. The features are split into several tables accordingly.
Features primarily intended for or exclusively required by South-Asian alphasyllabaries (Indic/Brahmic)
Features primarily intended for or exclusively required by East-Asian tetragrams (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
Features primarily intended for or exclusively required by West-Asian (Semitic, Arabic) and other cursive scripts or fonts
Features intended for bicameral asedalphabets (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, etc.)
Features depending on writing direction
Features intended for digits and math
Ligation and alternate forms features intended for all scripts
Positioning features intended for all scripts
Special features intended for all scripts
Legend of substitution and positioning codes
Below are listed the OpenType lookup table types, as used in the "type" column in the above tables. ''S'' stands for ''substitution'', and ''P'' stands for ''positioning''. Note that often a feature can be implemented by more than one type of table, and that sometimes the specification fails to explicitly indicate the table type.
AAT typographic features
Features that take one value, mutual exclusive from the rest:
* Annotation
nalt
** No Annotation
** Box Annotation
** Rounded Box Annotation
** Circle Annotation
** Inverted Circle Annotation
** Parenthesis Annotation
** Period Annotation
** Roman Numeral Annotation
** Diamond Annotation
* Character Alternatives
** ''No Alternates''
** …
rand; aalt, calt, falt, jalt, salt, ssXX, hkna/vkna, rtla, vrt2
* Character Shape
half, ruby; ljmo, vjmo, tjmo
** Traditional Characters
trad
** Simplified Characters
smpl
** JIS 1978 Characters
jp78
** JIS 1983 Characters
jp83
** JIS 1990 Characters
jp90
** Traditional Characters, Alternative Set 1…5
tnam, hojo, nlck
** Expert Characters
expt, locl
* CJK Latin Spacing
** Half-width
hwid, halt
** Proportional
pwid, palt
** Default Latin
** Full-width Latin
fwid
* Cursive Connection
init, medi/med2, fina/fin2/fin3; haln, nukt, vatu, rphf, pres, pstf/psts
** Unconnected
isol
** Partially Connected
calt, clig
** Cursive
curs
* Design Complexity
** ''Design Level 1''
** Design Level …
* Diacritics
** ''Show Diacritics''
** Hide Diacritics
** Decompose Diacritics
ccmp
* Fractions
** No Fractions
** Vertical Fractions
afrc
** Diagonal Fractions
frac, dnom, numr
* Ideographic Spacing
** Full Width
fwid
** Proportional
pwid, palt
* Kana Spacing
** Full Width
fwid
** Proportional
pwid, palt
* Letter Case
case
** ''Upper & Lower Case''
** All Caps
** All Lower Case
** Small Caps
smcp, pcap
** Initial Caps
c2sc, c2pc
** Initial Caps and Small Caps
* Number Case
** Lower Case Numbers
onum
** Upper Case Numbers
lnum
* Number Spacing
** Monospaced Numbers
tnum
** Proportional Numbers
pnum
* Ornament Sets
ornm
** ''None''
** Dingbats
** Pi Characters
** Fleurons
** Decorative Borders
** International Symbols
** Math Symbols
mgrk
* Text Spacing
** Proportional
pwid, palt
** Monospace
fwid
** Half-width
hwid, halt
** ''Normal''
* Vertical Position
** ''No Vertical Position''
** Superiors
supr
** Inferiors
subs, sinf
** Ordinals
ordn
Features that take a number of values:
*
Ligatures
** Required Ligatures
rlig, clig
** Common Ligatures
liga
** Rare Ligatures
hlig, dlig
** Logos
** Rebus Pictures
** Diphthong Ligatures
** Squared Ligatures
** Squared Ligatures, Abbreviated
* Mathematical Extras
** Hyphen to Minus (‘-’ → ‘−’)
** Asterisk to Multiply (‘*’ → ‘×’)
** Slash to Divide (‘/’ → ‘÷’)
** Inequality Ligatures
** Exponents
* Smart
Swash
Swash, or forewash in geography, is a turbulence, turbulent layer of water that washes up on the beach after an incoming ocean surface wave, wave has broken. The swash action can move beach materials up and down the beach, which results in the ...
es
swsh, cswh
** Word Initial Swashes
** Word Final Swashes
** Line Initial Swashes
** Line Final Swashes
falt
** Non-Final Swashes
jalt
* Style Options
** ''No Style Options''
** Display Text
size
** Engraved Text
** Illuminated Caps
** Titling Caps
titl
** Tall Caps
* Transliteration
locl
** ''No Transliteration''
**
Hanja
Hanja (Hangul: ; Hanja: , ), alternatively known as Hancha, are Chinese characters () used in the writing of Korean. Hanja was used as early as the Gojoseon period, the first ever Korean kingdom.
(, ) refers to Sino-Korean vocabulary, ...
to
Hangul
The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul, . Hangul may also be written as following South Korea's standard Romanization. ( ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language. The l ...
** Hanja to Hangul, Alternative Set 1…3
**
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''.
It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contras ...
to
Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived f ...
** Katakana to Hiragana
**
Kana
The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters ( kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most ...
to
Romanization
Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, a ...
** Romanization to Hiragana
** Romanization to Katakana
* Typographic Extras
**
Hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes ( figure ...
s to Em
Dash
The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen ...
(‘--’ → ‘—’)
** Hyphen to En Dash (‘-’ → ‘–’)
** Unslashed Zero
zero
** Form
Interrobang
The interrobang (), also known as the interabang (often represented by any of ?!, !?, ?!? or !?!), is an unconventional punctuation mark used in various written languages and intended to combine the functions of the question mark, or interro ...
(‘!?’/‘?!’ → ‘‽’)
** Smart Quotes (‘"'"’ → ‘“’”’)
** Periods to Ellipsis (‘...’ → ‘…’)
Binary features that can only be turned on:
* All Typographic Features
* Linguistic Rearrangement
* Overlapping Characters
* Vertical Substitution
External links
*
* – AAT layout tag specs
*
*
{{Typography terms
Typography
Typesetting