Fonty-goodness, glyphs, and other strangers.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Not sure its enough to blow AU$70. Most discount coupons don't work down here - which says not a lot for the AUS-US so-called Free Trade Agreement. I'd rather give the $70 to the Fijians.

Maybe I could crowdsource the AU$70 :lol:

Vaguely remember Internet Directory - also remember Gopher, WAIS and WISC.

BR

Not to mention Archie, et al. You know, we had the 18th Internet Connection in Phoenix, AZ. We had a client number of 18 (00018), with the very first ISP. Wow, that feels a long time ago. What's boggling is to remember how much of my life and career came BEFORE the Internet. And cellphones. Sheesh.

Hitch

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Now, some fonts that I snag have reliable foundries--or their creators make what I call "glyph maps" or "glyph guides." These are PDF pages that show the glyphs, and their character map. Right? If you get a glyph-heavy font, this is invaluable.

BUT, sadly...other font-makers aren't that cool. You get a font, and the glyphs, and tough s**t if you can't find what you want. I have a font like that now. It contains nearly 1,000 custom glyphs.

So, you want a nice Glyph Map those bajillion fonts you have?

You know me and my latest LaTeX binge... so I couldn't help but looking up a TeX-based solution.

Here is a way to generate a glyph map of a given font by just go through all the Unicode points:

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questi...phs-with-xetex

It was easy as pie. I was able to generate a glyph map PDF within seconds. All I had to do was feed it the name of the font.

I attached a few sample PDFs I made using the code from the above link:

• Charis SIL
  • Also a special one with larger font size. Tagged it with "[OldPeople]" just for you.
• DejaVu Sans
• Gentium Plus
• Linux Libertine O
• Segoe UI Symbol
• Times New Roman

They aren't the prettiest, but I guess it gets the job done in my book.

Hopefully I understood all this rambling correctly?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

So, you want a nice Glyph Map those bajillion fonts you have?

You know me and my latest LaTeX binge... so I couldn't help but looking up a TeX-based solution.

Having read this, sweetie, I can't quite decide between kissing you and smacking you in the kisser. Old people, my nearly-geriatric butt! Although, ahem, I do have to say, the "old people" one is mo' bettah. (Yup, there I go again. Faux-patois. Would that be Fauxtois? I'm fauxtoising along. Gosh, I hope people can distinguish "Fauxtois" from "Fatwah.")

Here is a way to generate a glyph map of a given font by just go through all the Unicode points:

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questi...phs-with-xetex

It was easy as pie. I was able to generate a glyph map PDF within seconds. All I had to do was feed it the name of the font.

I attached a few sample PDFs I made using the code from the above link:

• Charis SIL
  • Also a special one with larger font size. Tagged it with "[OldPeople]" just for you.
• DejaVu Sans
• Gentium Plus
• Linux Libertine O
• Segoe UI Symbol
• Times New Roman

They aren't the prettiest, but I guess it gets the job done in my book.

Hopefully I understood all this rambling correctly?

This is rather brill, although my brain still shies away from the idea of creating a glyph map for...what, 1400 fonts? Yikes. Hmmmm...I wonder if I could run something like that in a batch process?

(OMG, I've just lost my mind. I can't even believe I'm discussing this. Whatever happened to my life with Caecilia, TNR...?)

Thanks, Tex. It's excellent to know this. And of course, I mooched your Glyph maps.

Best,
Hitch

[DaleDe]

While not glyph/font set specific there are similar maps in our wiki. Check https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Name...ter_references Named character references for the HTML5 supported names. Check the category and links inside the page for several others.

Dale

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Having read this, sweetie, I can't quite decide between kissing you and smacking you in the kisser. Old people, my nearly-geriatric butt! Although, ahem, I do have to say, the "old people" one is mo' bettah.

I knew you would like it. As with anything in TeX, the font size can easily be tweaked (or the margins, or the amount of columns, or the paper size, or portrait/landscape, etc. etc.).

Originally Posted by Hitch

This is rather brill, although my brain still shies away from the idea of creating a glyph map for...what, 1400 fonts? Yikes. Hmmmm...I wonder if I could run something like that in a batch process?

I am not too familiar with batch files (really something I should learn after all these years)... I would probably just do it highly inefficiently and brute force it and feed a list of fonts into a little program to generate a new .tex file for every font (and the different font faces?). :P

To change the font, all that has to change in the .tex file is this little line:

\setmainfont{Times New Roman}

You just change "Times New Roman" into whatever font name (Arial, Charis SIL, Gentium Plus, [...]).

If you want to generate the glyph map for Bold/Italic/BoldItalic, you would then have to change this line:

\symbol{\i}\endgraf

Bold:

\textbf{\symbol{\i}\endgraf}

Italic:

\textit{\symbol{\i}\endgraf}

BoldItalic:

\textbf{\textit{\symbol{\i}\endgraf}}

Originally Posted by Hitch

Thanks, Tex. It's excellent to know this. And of course, I mooched your Glyph maps.

So last night I stumbled across a few hiccups.

Hiccup #1: A few of the fonts weren't working (Wingdings/Wingdings 2/Webdings/a few others). I believe the fonts have to be Unicode aware (?) so the previous method would just generate a blank PDF. That lead me to this:

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questi...ont-in-xelatex

So I generated a few of glyph maps for those fonts (they are ugly, but they show all the glyphs).

I stuck them in a zip file:

• Webdings/Wingdings/Wingdings 2/Wingdings 3

With your ten thousand different fonts, there are probably bound to be some that just won't show up using the previous Unicode method. As you stumble across them, we could probably go hunting around for different solutions (or maybe the above one works). :P

Hiccup #2: I was messing around last night on file-format.info, and I saw that "Segoe UI Symbol" font had quite a few more symbols higher up in Unicode. Turns out U+FFFF isn't high enough.

This line in the .tex file had to change:

\multido{\i=0+1}{"10000}{% from U+0000 to U+FFFF

I am not 100% sure what this loop does (I thought I understood it, but in the end I was baffled). From some simple testing though, I changed it to:

\multido{\i=0+1}{"50000}{

This seems to cause it to go far beyond U+FFFF, and get all of the other Unicode blocks (Emoticons, Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols, CJK, [...]).

• BabelStone Han[Expanded]
  
  • I used this font as a test for the really high Unicode positions.
• Cambria Math[Expanded]
• Charis SIL[Expanded]
• DejaVu Sans[Expanded]
• Gentium Plus[Expanded]
• Segoe UI Symbol[Expanded]

Hiccup #3: I have no idea about showing alternative glyphs and all of that fancier OpenType stuff.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Good luck with the search for software, but take courage: I think I've settled on a desktop search tool that isn't just another 'me too' - X1. Not cheap and at times it looks a bit lego-ish, but has the features I want. <snip> been looking ever since.

BR

OMG. I went over there, and while I could REALLY use the Desktop searcher (I've just upgraded my machine to 3TB RAIDS), I was interested in the Web/Social Media tool.

Until I saw the price.

So much for THAT idea. Bloody HELL!

Hitch