Print or type every glyph in the font

Mithil Mogare
Mithil Mogare Posts: 48
in Font Technology
What is the easiest way to get a print out of each and every glyph in the font, instead of typing it one by one?
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Comments

  • Paul Hanslow
    Paul Hanslow Posts: 175
    What program you using to type out the font? There is a clever InDesign script which dumps the entire glyph set into a new document. If you're using InDesign I'll send you the link.
  • Mithil Mogare
    Mithil Mogare Posts: 48
    edited April 30
    Paul Hanslow said:
    What program you using to type out the font? There is a clever InDesign script which dumps the entire glyph set into a new document. If you're using InDesign I'll send you the link.
    I generally use InDesign for specimen generation or type testing.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,896
    I use this script occasionally. What I liked about the script is, working by GID means it does every glyph, regardless of encoding or alternate status.

    It does them in glyph ID order, which works well for fonts where the designer/developer has exercised control over the glyph order. Some fonts may look a little chaotic, though.

    What it does not do is, automatically default to “all the glyphs in the font” or even tell you how many there are. Some updates or tweaks to the script might be helpful, if you wanted a lot of all-the-glyphs samples.
  • k.l.
    k.l. Posts: 109
    edited April 30
    Just choose some arbitrary larger-than-need-be number. All glyphs past the font’s actual glyph count are displayed as .notdef which are easy to spot, select and delete.
  • Mithil Mogare
    Mithil Mogare Posts: 48
    Thomas Phinney said:
    I use this script occasionally. What I liked about the script is, working by GID means it does every glyph, regardless of encoding or alternate status.

    It does them in glyph ID order, which works well for fonts where the designer/developer has exercised control over the glyph order. Some fonts may look a little chaotic, though.

    What it does not do is, automatically default to “all the glyphs in the font” or even tell you how many there are. Some updates or tweaks to the script might be helpful, if you wanted a lot of all-the-glyphs samples.
    This is interesting, Could you please provide source of script or tutorials?
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,896
    It is linked in the article Paul linked to above: https://typedrawers.com/home/leaving?allowTrusted=1&target=https://creativepro.com/make-a-font-contact-sheet-in-indesign/

    Direct link to the current script: https://creativepro.com/downloads/forcedl/FontTableMW for CC.jsx
  • BraveType
    BraveType Posts: 2
    I once used
    https://www.alphabet-type.com/tools/charset-checker
    For this purpose. 
  • Michal Chrastina
    Michal Chrastina Posts: 4
    edited May 5
    If you are using Glyphs app there is also script “Copy InDesign Test Text” in Mekkablue folder. It copies every glyph into the clipboard. 
  • Mithil Mogare
    Mithil Mogare Posts: 48
    Michal Chrastina said:
    If you are using Glyphs app there is also script “Copy InDesign Test Text” in Mekkablue folder. It copies every glyph into the clipboard. 
    Na I am using fontlab 
  • Yves Michel
    Yves Michel Posts: 183
    Mithil Mogare said:
    Na I am using fontlab 
    Unfortunately, Fontlab 6, 7 and 8 don't provide (yet?) the print feature present in their Studio 5 ancestor.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,227
    The print options in recent versions of FontLab are indeed woeful, but that’s a separate issue from getting every glyph out of a font tool and into a program like InDesign. The Glyphs script that Michal mentioned presumably takes advantage of writing glyph IDs to  InDesign’s tagged text format. Toshi has a similar Glyphs script that works in this way.

    It would be relatively easy, I think, for someone with Python programming skills and a knowledge of the FontLab API to write a similar script to work in FontLab. You could ask on the FL forum.

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