EXTENDED OR EXPERT SETS
Marry digital typefaces have extensive ranges of characters well in excess of the basic set of letters, numerals, punctuation marks, and symbols included as standard in most font. Where these are included within a single font file, the font is said to have an extended character set. The Unicode character encoding system, now the industry standard ,encompasses a huge range of characters in many languages, although this is no guarantee that a particular font will include them. Open Type fonts can also store multiple glyphs (letterforms) for each character. For example, there may be ‘optical’ variants designed for use at a different range of sizes (such as text and display); or a ligature glyph may represent multiple characters, such as ‘ffi’.
Many of the fonts on the market predate these technologies, and any additional characters are supplied as a separate font, known as an expert set. In either case, the serious typographer is provided with a range of extra letterforms that share the inherent form and structure of the basic typeface.
Another example of an alternative glyph is a swash character: a decorative version of a letter with an exaggerated sweeping entrance or exit stroke that may overlap the preceding or following character. Swash characters can add a flourish to the start or the end of a word. Capitals
‘swash caps’) are common, but some designs include swash initial, termina land even medial lowercase letters (see above
Non-lining or old-style numerals, which ascend and decend like lower-case letters rather than lining, are another useful option. Specially designed small capitals are essential for setting text in small caps, as ordinary caps reduced in size will not match the weight ad proportion of other characters.