• Digit
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Topic: a font viewer?

no font viewer in crunchbang?
or is it just not set up for file associations?

i suggest we get a font viewer in there.
i did a couple minutes trying to find a list of font viewers, or even just a lightweight font viewer.  seems wiki hasnt got there yet.
the archers have been discussing this already too, so after witnessing that discussion, i looked in synaptic package manager for opcion (not there) and fontmatrix (there), and installed it for my immediate needs... but since this is crunchbang... surely we can pull our collective knowledge resources and find a great tool that gives the best bang for crunch ratio.
is fontmatrix it?
what say ye all?

(edit~ after playing around.... fontmatrix doesnt quite do it for me)

Last edited by Digit (2009-06-30 19:39:03)

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Digit's Website

  • From: California, USA
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Re: a font viewer?

CrunchBang has no font viewer afaik.

I think since CrunchBang already includes QT4 (for VLC) that fontmatrix would make a better choice.

For people who don't like QT4, theres fontypython.

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  • Digit
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Re: a font viewer?

yikes fontypython appears to be already installed.   it just for ttf fonts tho?  doesnt seem to want to open from just the font files tho.

dmenu shows up many other fonty wonders too....   i wonder...

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Digit's Website

  • From: California, USA
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Re: a font viewer?

If you have imagemagick and Thunar, you can make a custom action like:

Name: View font
Command: /usr/bin/display %f

I tried gnome-specimen but it doesn't work for individual fonts.

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  • Registered: 2009-03-09
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Re: a font viewer?

gnome-specimen and fontypython didn't work that well -- they didn't see all my fonts for one thing. I searched and found "gnome-font-viewer" and "gfontview", neither of which were in the repos. I avoided installing fontmatrix because it wanted to pull in a about 10MB of QT4 packages (mainly libqt4-webkit) and I didn't realize that QT4 is already installed for VLC. I installed fontmatrix and it worked well. It found all my fonts and has a good interface. I could also navigate to a folder of fonts and fontmatrix would preview the fonts for me -- ones that I haven't yet installed.

Good to know that imagemagick will preview fonts too.

Last edited by SabreWolfy (2012-01-08 10:36:37)

• #! Waldorf • Support #! •
  • From: inside Ed
  • Registered: 2011-07-25
  • Posts: 2,868

Re: a font viewer?

Doesn't lxappearance preview fonts?

LVM | Catalyst | Wireless
  • Registered: 2009-03-09
  • Posts: 764

Re: a font viewer?

^ Um where/how? My lxappearance has "Window", "Icon" and "Other" tabs and a "Font" entry on the "Window" tab which shows a small preview of installed fonts when you click on them.

• #! Waldorf • Support #! •
  • From: inside Ed
  • Registered: 2011-07-25
  • Posts: 2,868

Re: a font viewer?

Ah, you mean new fonts. My bad.

LVM | Catalyst | Wireless
  • From: London, UK
  • Registered: 2011-10-15
  • Posts: 200

Re: a font viewer?

I went with font-manager which seems to do the trick for me, but not sure what it'd dependencies were like and how light you want to keep your install.

EnochRoot's Website

  • Registered: 2009-03-09
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Re: a font viewer?

el_koraco wrote:

Ah, you mean new fonts. My bad.

Oh yeah, I want to preview TTF files before installing them.

• #! Waldorf • Support #! •
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Re: a font viewer?

EnochRoot wrote:

I went with font-manager which seems to do the trick for me, but not sure what it'd dependencies were like and how light you want to keep your install.

Package name "font-manager"?

• #! Waldorf • Support #! •
  • From: A kingdom in transition
  • Registered: 2011-06-24
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Re: a font viewer?

A very rudimentory viewer: xfontsel

If you poke the bear it is going to come after you.
  • From: London, UK
  • Registered: 2011-10-15
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Re: a font viewer?

SabreWolfy wrote:
EnochRoot wrote:

I went with font-manager which seems to do the trick for me, but not sure what it'd dependencies were like and how light you want to keep your install.

Package name "font-manager"?

Think so but away from box at the moment

EnochRoot's Website

  • Registered: 2009-03-09
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Re: a font viewer?

^ I asked because I couldn't find a package named "font-manager". I ended up using fontmatrix.

• #! Waldorf • Support #! •
  • From: London, UK
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Re: a font viewer?

Looks like its a google project http://code.google.com/p/font-manager/ but I did install from synaptic - pretty sure I just searched for font or font manager or did an apt-cache search. Will check when at home this evening if you're still interested - the website link above gives you a good idea of what it's like

EnochRoot's Website

  • Registered: 2009-03-09
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Re: a font viewer?

^ Not to worry -- fontmatrix worked for me.

• #! Waldorf • Support #! •
  • Registered: 2009-10-01
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Re: a font viewer?

would be nice to have decent font viewer that also allows to enter a text to see if it the words work with the letters (for logos, headlines etc) and sorts fonts by families.. I do a lot of graphic design, so this is kind of essential.

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  • Kuno
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  • Registered: 2009-01-09
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Re: a font viewer?

saneks wrote:

would be nice to have decent font viewer that also allows to enter a text to see if it the words work with the letters (for logos, headlines etc) and sorts fonts by families.. I do a lot of graphic design, so this is kind of essential.

Then take font-manager. Allows you to enter "Custom Text". Screenshot in EnochRoot's link above...

Last edited by Kuno (2012-01-09 14:30:17)

  • pvsage
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  • Registered: 2009-10-18
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Re: a font viewer?

^^ fontmatrix does look promising...screenshot from Synaptic shows a "Sample Text" tab...

while ( ! ( succeed = try() ) );