Living Sans Beta 10: weight + variant review

One variable axis. The headline below loops across the full wght 100 → 1800 range so you can watch the outlines morph; the staircase pins seven sample weights along the way.

default

Base A–Z glyphs. These carry no weight-variation data, so on their own they don't animate at all.

ss01 / ss02

Stylistic-set alternates covering most of the alphabet: all of the weight animation lives in these alternate glyphs.

ss03

Alternates for A, D, L, M and O only; every other letter falls back to its static base glyph.

calt on

Contextual alternates: the browser default. The font swaps letters for ss01/ss02/ss03 alternates depending on their neighbours, which is what mixes animating and static letters within one word.

calt off

font-feature-settings: "calt" 0: contextual swapping disabled, so you see only what the variant column explicitly requests.

Letter-spacing + calt: browsers drop contextual alternates by default the moment CSS letter-spacing is non-zero, which is why naive tracking used to make the animation disappear (the movement lives in the calt-swapped glyphs). The fix every specimen here now uses: force font-feature-settings: "calt" 1 explicitly, which overrides that default. Try it live: drag the letter-spacing slider in the sticky bar and watch the calt-on rows keep their alternates instead of snapping to base glyphs. The alternates are also drawn to pass close to the base shapes around wght 500, so judge calt at the weight extremes (200 / 900), not mid-axis.