fntsample

|build| |license|

.. |build| image:: https://github.com/eugmes/fntsample/actions/workflows/ci.yml/badge.svg :target: https://github.com/eugmes/fntsample/actions/workflows/ci.yml .. |license| image:: https://img.shields.io/badge/License-GPL%20v3-blue.svg :alt: License: GPL v3 :target: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0

fntsample is a tool that can be used to make font samples that show coverage of the font and are similar in appearance to Unicode Charts <https://www.unicode.org/charts/>. It was developed for use with DejaVu Fonts <https://dejavu-fonts.github.io> project. fntsample is licensed under GPL <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>_ version 3 or later.

.. image:: screenshot.png :alt: Output example

Features

• Support for various font formats using FreeType <https://www.freetype.org>_ library, including TrueType, OpenType, and Type1.

• Creating samples in PDF, PostScript, and SVG formats.

• Adding outlines with Unicode block names for PDF samples.

• Selection of code ranges to show in charts.

• Comparing of two font files with highlighting of added glyphs.

• Runs on Linux and other Unix-like systems.

Download

Releases are available from releases page <https://github.com/eugmes/fntsample/releases>. For source code releases for versions before 5.0 visit the old project page <https://sourceforge.net/projects/fntsample/>. The source code and issues tracker are accessible via the project page <https://github.com/eugmes/fntsample>_.

Building

The following libraries are required to build fntsample: cairo <https://www.cairographics.org>, fontconfig <https://www.fontconfig.org>, FreeType2 <https://www.freetype.org>, GLib <https://developer.gnome.org/glib/>, Pango <https://pango.gnome.org/>, gettext <https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>. They should be available in most Linux distributions. Additionally Unicode blocks <https://unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/Blocks.txt>_ file is required.

CMake <https://cmake.org>_ is used to build the code. In the directory with source code execute::

% mkdir build
% cd build
% cmake .. -DUNICODE_BLOCKS=/path/to/Blocks.txt
% make
% make install

The last step will install files under /usr/local by default. This can be overridden by adding -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/another/prefix to the cmake invocation.

fntsample could be built using Homebrew <https://brew.sh>_ on macOS. Use the following commands to install dependencies and configure the build environment before building the code::

% brew install cmake pgk-config gettext cairo pango fontconfig freetype glib
% export CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/usr/local/opt/gettext

Alternatively you can install fntsample using a Homebrew formula <https://github.com/eugmes/homebrew-fntsample>_::

% brew install eugmes/fntsample/fntsample

Usage

The basic usage for fntsample looks as follows::

% fntsample -f /file/to/font/file.ttf -o output.pdf

For more advanced usage consult the man pages for fntsample and pdfoutline.