Categorize your fonts with fontypython (Shallow Thoughts)

Categorize your fonts with fontypython

We were talking about fonts on #gimp-users and someone mentioned fontmatrix as a way to tag and organize fonts. (Tagging of resources like fonts is on ongoing GIMP project, and with any luck will be available in a future release.)

I tried fontmatrix and found it complex and inscrutable. But it made me look for smaller font-tagging projects, and that led me to FontyPython. It's fairly small, it's Python, it's already included in Ubuntu ... and how can you not like a project with a name like that?

When you start up, you need to choose a font folder to view any fonts. Unfortunately, the standard place to put fonts on a modern Linux system, ~/.fonts, is not an option: fontypython won't look in directories starting with a dot. The only way to view fonts installed in .fonts is to specify it on the command line: fontypython .fonts

I talked to the author, and it turns out the intent is quite different: you're intended to keep your font list somewhere else (say, ~/myfonts) and use fontypython to move fonts in and out of ~/.fonts, with the Install button. That model doesn't quite match my workflow -- I'd have to keep telling apps like GIMP to rescan the font list as I added and removed fonts (and other apps besides GIMP mostly need to be restarted to see new fonts) -- but it's probably ideal for some people.

When you first start up fontypython it displays the first page of your fonts. Instead of a scrollbar, you page through using the Back/Forward buttons or the option menu down below the font list. By default, fonts are displayed quite large; you can change the size in File->Settings if you want to see more at once.

It's time to start categorizing! To do that, you need to create some pogs, a silly term taken from tyPOGraphy. Pogs are just categories of font. Click on New Pog in the buttons at the bottom right of the window and choose a name for your first pog -- you might want pogs for "script", or "handwriting", or "gothic", or "outline".

Once you've created some pogs, select one in the Target list along the right edge of the window. That's your active pog. Add fonts to the pog by clicking on them in the list (a big red checkmark will appear over the font). Mark as many as you want to move, then click "Put fonts into pogname" at the bottom of the window. Those fonts will grey out, to indicate that they're members of the current pog.

To view fonts by pog -- to view all your handwriting or script fonts -- use the Pogs tab near the upper left of the window.

Nothing to it! Unfortunately, the python routines fontypython uses fails on a few fonts; but that's true of most font viewers (like gtkfontsel), and fontypython does better than many. It does offer a way to screen out bad fonts that can't display, in case you have any fonts that cause serious problems like crashes (I didn't).

Quite a useful program if you're a font junkie like I am! I'm looking forward to using it for real projects.

Tags: fonts, linux
[ 13:13 Mar 06, 2009    More linux | permalink to this entry | ]