Author Topic: What program for font preview  (Read 22825 times)

Einar Lygre

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What program for font preview
« on: January 19, 2017, 02:36:48 pm »
I have hundreds of fonts in some folders. I have downloaded them from internet and the intention was to use some of them in Scribus. But of course I have lost track of them. I need to delete many of them, but which ones?
Is there a program that can, in a simple way, display them, preferable many at the same time.

Cheers

Einar Lygre

ivan

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Re: What program for font preview
« Reply #1 on: January 19, 2017, 04:47:12 pm »
You could use Fontviewer which is a java program.  It works with openjdk6 but you will need to know where your fonts are.

Dave Yeo

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Re: What program for font preview
« Reply #2 on: January 19, 2017, 08:23:38 pm »
I used http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/font/fntf30a.zip a long time back. Worked well except it is abandoned shareware so stops working after a month or so. Nice thing is it is native and can install and uninstall the fonts.
 

ivan

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Re: What program for font preview
« Reply #3 on: January 20, 2017, 12:03:39 am »
I remember that one Dave but the problem was I could never find a way of actually displaying what the font looked like.  At least you can do that easily with Fontviewer.

Dave Yeo

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Re: What program for font preview
« Reply #4 on: January 20, 2017, 12:38:26 am »
Right click on a font and at the bottom of the menu, choose font browser. Though the graphics aren't the best.
Fonts look much better if opened through the fonts folder under system setup (installed by Xworkplace?). Probably the old fontfolder used the original truetype engine rather then freetype.
Have to look at Fontviewer.

Dave Yeo

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Re: What program for font preview
« Reply #5 on: January 20, 2017, 12:46:40 am »
How are you running Fontviewer? Here trying to start it with java -jar FontViewer.jar results in it crashing due to not being able to load the shell folder ID list.

Pete

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Re: What program for font preview
« Reply #6 on: January 20, 2017, 01:07:24 am »
Hi All

Thought I'd give FontViewer a try so clicked on the link at the bottom of ivans post. Seamonkey (User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (OS/2; Warp 4.5; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0 SeaMonkey/2.35) popped up the Open/Save dialog, I selected Save and clicked OK. No follow up dialog asking where to download to though.

I get the same problem when trying to download the accompanying icon file.

Is this Seamonkey misbehaving or is there something wrong with the download link? - Can anyone else download these files with this build of Seamonkey?


Regards

Pete

Dave Yeo

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Re: What program for font preview
« Reply #7 on: January 20, 2017, 02:13:33 am »
Worked fine here with the latest SM. I have seen similar though and IIRC, fixed it by changing the options under Preferences-->Downloads, I think When Saving a file and then back.

Einar Lygre

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Re: What program for font preview
« Reply #8 on: January 20, 2017, 10:34:12 am »
You could use Fontviewer which is a java program.  It works with openjdk6 but you will need to know where your fonts are.

Thank you. Works fine, but I should like to see more the one font at a time, just to compare them before selecting one.

Alex Taylor

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Re: What program for font preview
« Reply #9 on: January 20, 2017, 11:35:03 am »
There is also fontinfo which is mine.  It's admittedly designed more for inspecting font headers than for previewing, but you can view individual characters.  If you associate it with TTF, OTF and/or PFB files, you should be able to open several files at a time in separate instances using the WPS or a file manager.

ivan

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Re: What program for font preview
« Reply #10 on: January 20, 2017, 12:50:26 pm »
Hi Dave,

I use a program object with the following in the 'Program' page:
                           
C:\OPENJDK6-GA3\BIN\JAVAW.EXE
-Duser.home=f:\java-apps\fontviewer -jar fontviewer.jar
F:\JAVA-APPS\FONTVIEWER

And       Font Display on the 'Icon' page.

Obviously you need to change paths as necessary.
                               


Pete

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Re: What program for font preview
« Reply #11 on: January 20, 2017, 08:57:30 pm »
Hi Dave

The download works as long as Preferences -> Downloads  -> when saving a file is set to "Save files to" but not when set to "Always ask where...".

As I can download files from other websites with the option "Always ask where..." set  - no problems downloading Fontfolder using the url supplied in your above post - I can only guess there is something different with downloading files from os2world that Seamonkey does not like.


Later:
I think I may have found the problem. If I use Shift-Click Seamonkey bypasses the Download dialog and opens the Save to dialog which shows the filename as index.php

Having downloaded index.php I can confirm it is actually FontViewer.jar

Does this indicate the problem is with the download link and related website code?



Regards

Pete
« Last Edit: January 21, 2017, 12:16:17 am by Pete »

Ian Manners

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Re: What program for font preview
« Reply #12 on: January 21, 2017, 07:06:29 pm »
Hi Pete,

Quote
Does this indicate the problem is with the download link and related website code?

I just downloaded the jar and icon files and it went flawlessly in Firefox. This would suggest the website code is ok, well, at least with Firefox.
Both gave me the dialog box on first click that asks me where to save each file. And both files where then saved fine.
I do have 'Ask me' ticked on the download options.
Cheers
Ian B Manners

Dave Yeo

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Re: What program for font preview
« Reply #13 on: January 21, 2017, 07:13:33 pm »
Hi Pete, you've probably got some profile corruption somewhere. You could test with a new profile.
Hi Ivan, pretty much how I was trying to run it. Double checked I have the latest Java, re-installed Odin and tested with a different Odin and even wiped the registry. Same error.
Not too important as other java programs run.

ivan

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Re: What program for font preview
« Reply #14 on: January 21, 2017, 08:17:09 pm »
Hi Dave,  This appears to be one of the java programs that requires openjdk6-ga3 to run. 

I have a few java programs that will not run with openjdk6-ga5.  I don't think there are supposed to be that many differences between ga3 and ga5 but there are enough not to let some java programs work that is why I have both versions on this computer.