Paul van der Laan

The Python FontTools library gives access to the contents of most common font file formats. For OpenType and TrueType fonts it will be a matter of writing a Python program that can iterate through folders with font files, open them via FontTools, and then collect all necessary info from the 'name' table. Additionally the code can check for the existence of a 'glyf', 'CFF ' or 'CFF2' table to determine whether the font is TrueType or PostScript flavoured.

Output could be a tab-seperated text file which can be imported in a database or spreadsheet.

Not sure what font formats are exactly used by LaTeX (pfa?). There is a chance that FontTools will be able to open that format too. But you will have to check that particular file format spec how it stores the naming.

Hope this helps!

I find Windows PostScript fonts indeed give a warmer appearance to text, but only when used on vintage equipment such as an Intel Pentium 120 MHz with 4 MB RAM running Windows 3. Those bigger transistors really make a difference there.

set the first line of your feature to:

sub i l' l' by l_l;

The order of the substution rules does matter, and you need to define the longest substitutions first.

Never mind, I found it. This will do the trick:

from fontTools.ttLib.tables._n_a_m_e import NameRecord

myRecord = NameRecord()
myRecord.nameID = 128
myRecord.platformID = 64
myRecord.platEncID = 32
myRecord.langID = 16
myRecord.string = 'testing'

ttfont['name'].names.append(myRecord)

The /florin – as with other currency symbols – needs to work with numbers and therefore I usually design it differently than italic /f. Especially when it needs to work with lining numbers I make the descending part shorter. Also I might design the proportions wider, and place the horizontal bar on a different height than x-height.

Here is an example of /florin versus /f from AudiType Bold Italic: