by Zweibieren February 12, 2012 V2.2 (934zb)

Using FontViewer

FontViewer displays a list of all the fonts on your computer together with a given text in each of those fonts. Clicking checkboxes and sorting on the checkbox column lets you compare fonts to choose one for some purpose.

Starting FontViewer

FontViewer is deployed as a clickable jar file; double-click the file or its icon and FontViewer will start. It will show the default font category information. See the Advanced section below for creating your own categories.

FontViewer Window

FontViewer looks like this. The orange labels identify the sections. Let's consider them in reverse order: table, top, and menu.

Table

By name, the columns are

• BI - Bold for Bold, I for italic. Values are relative to the plain font. Some bolds are bolder than others
• Category- General font category: serif, sans serif; symbol, etc. Useful for sorting. You can edit the categories or enter your own with the usual text editing commands. See the Advanced section, below.
• Font Name - Most applications that let you choose a font will display these names.
• Ck - For sorting the candidates. As you view the fonts for a purpose, make check marks against the likely ones. When sorted on this column, the checked fonts will be listed at the very top.
• Sample ... - The sample text is shown in the font for this row. There is no good way to see samples of the symbol fonts.

Clicking a header sorts by that column. Dragging the headers will rearrange the columns. The scroll bar will scroll the text. Generating samples is slow, so the sample text column is not redrawn until you release the mouse button.

Top

Above the table are three widgets:

• Size controls the size of the text in the Sample column. You may click the up and down arrows to adjust the size in increments of 4 points. Or type an exact number of points into the digits area.
• Style controls the style: plain, bold, italic, or both bold and italic. Warning: Some fonts are already in bold or italic. These will be distorted when the Style is other than "plain."
• Sample is the origin of the text shown in the sample column for each font. The default text displays all letters and several of the most common digrams and trigrams.

Menu

A rudimentary set of options are offered:

• File / Save - Save the current categories back to the file they were loaded from. An error is alerted if the categories came from the system default or another non-file source.
• File / Save As - You are prompted for a file name; when you click Save the category information is saved into the chosen file. You can save the default category information in a file and then modify the categories.
• File / Exit - The application terminates. If you have modified the default categories, they will be saved into the file they came from. If they did not come from a file, you will be prompted for a file name.
• Help / Help - Displays this file in your usual browser.
• Help / Reset - The sample text reverts to its original.

Usage: To choose a font

1. Type an example of the text you want into the sample text area at the top.
2. Set Size and Style to the ones you want.
3. Click the header of the Category column to sort by categories. Scroll to the section with the category you want.
4. Scroll thourgh the fonts looking for what you want. Click the check box of any likely candidates.
5. Click the header of the checkbox column and scroll to the top of the checkbox column, where the checked rows are gathered together.
6. Pick a font, click its name, and type control-C.
7. Click in the application where you want the file name and type control-V. The font name will be pasted.

Advanced

Special Keys

• Control-S will save the categories data.
• Control-R will revert the sample text to its original.
• Right-click on the sample-text widget to get a menu option which will also revert the sample text.

Startup argument

The FontViewer main program accepts one argument, the location of the category data. You can set this for any FontViewer icon by right-clicking the icon and choosing the "properties" option. Add a space and the parameter to the end of the Target field. For eaxample, with the added part in blue:

C:\fred\tools\FontViewer.jar mycategories.txt

The argument is not limited to a file name; a URI can be used instead. For instance, the default can be accessed as resource:fontcategories.txt or http://physpics.com/Java/apps/FontViewer/fontcategories.txt (the first is embedded in FontViewer.jar, but both have the same content). The "data:" URI scheme is implemented, but modifiers between the colon and comma are ignored.

FontViewer may be started from a command line. If it is in directory ddd, the command would be

java -jar ddd/FontViewer.jar argument

Usage: To create your own categories

You can invent your own font categories. To start with the defaults, use the File/SaveAs menu item to store the existing categories in a convenient location. Then supply that location as an argument to FontViewer, as described just above.

Revise the categories by treating the category field as text. The usual text operations apply, including control-C for copy and control-V for paste.

After revising the categories, click the File/Save option, your file will be updated with the new categories. IN addition, the categories are saved automatically every ten minutes and when the program exits.

If you want to start with no pre-defined categories, create an empty file and provide it as the initial argument in the shortcut. Otherwise, reading a non-existent file is an error and startup will replace the error file with the builtin categories.

Enjoy

Send comments to zweibieren@physpics.com.

Copyright © 2012 Zweibieren, All rights reserved.