Typeface references

Which writing systems must your type render?

A typeface only draws the characters — glyphs — it actually contains. Those glyphs ship grouped into writing systems (Latin, Cyrillic, Greek…), and the writing system, not the language, is the unit a face either carries or doesn't: German, French and Spanish all ride on Latin, so a face that draws one draws all three. If your product ships in a writing system a face doesn't include, that text quietly falls back to a system font — or the dreaded “tofu” boxes. Tell Etesie which writing systems you ship in and every typeface is checked against them.

The browser walks each family's fallback stack and uses the first face that has each glyph — exactly the CSS font-family fallback relay Material relies on.

Two typefaces, two jobs

Splitting type into two roles keeps a system both expressive and readable. The brand face appears rarely and large, so it can afford character. The plain face appears constantly and small, so it has to stay quiet and legible. Etesie assigns them automatically by role.

A third voice: mono, for technical content

Material's type system defines exactly two typeface families — brand and plain — mapped under md.ref.typeface.*. But developer-facing products render code, keys, hashes, file paths and aligned numbers. That needs a monospace voice Material doesn't cover.

Etesie adds one thing transparently: --et-typeface-mono. It never replaces brand or plain. Technical styles reuse real Material role and size metrics and only swap the family. codeInline is just Body M, in mono.

How they pair