Certain special characters, symbols, and styles of fonts are expert characters. The expert characters can include:
- Discretionary or unusual ligatures
- small caps
- Old Style figures
- fractions
- ornaments
- Alternate characters: different versions of some characters, swashes, swirls, or characters designed for a special use such as fancy initial caps.
Expert character sets are included in many Mac fonts but are separate font packages for most TrueType and Type 1 PC/Windows fonts (such as the alternate character set for the free Freebooter Script and Scriptina fonts).
OpenType fonts, especially new OpenType fonts that are not simply conversions from other types, typically include many extended or expert characters built into the font file so a separate font file is not needed. However, you will need software that is able to access and use the extended character sets in OpenType fonts. (Recent editions of the Adobe Creative Suite, QuarkXPress, and even Publisher 2010 can access some or all of these OpenType special features.)
