There is no more fundamental way to inspect a font than by examining the outlines of the individual glyphs that comprise the entire font.
Glyphs are visual representations of individual characters in a font file. Each glyph is a piece of art whose mathematical outline defines the appearance of a letter, ligature (a combination of multiple characters into a single glyph), numeric digit, symbol or other character.
Glyphs View Functionality
The versatility of the Glyphs View in FontAgent® enables you to quickly:
- View a grid of all the glyphs in a font file
- Examine symbols, dingbats, ligatures and other special characters
- Set colors and sizes of the glyph images
- Play a slide show of all currently selected fonts
- Activate and deactivate the currently displayed font
- Drag and drop glyphs into your documents
Displaying the Glyphs View
The Glyphs View appears in the bottom pane of FontAgent’s Main Window and displays currently selected font’s full glyph set. To view glyphs, select one or more fonts in the top pane of FontAgent’s Main Window, and then click the Glyphs tab in the bottom pane.
Viewing Symbol and Dingbat Fonts
The Glyphs View is particularly useful for displaying glyphs for symbol and dingbat fonts. Just open the Glyphs View, select a font, and you have instant access to all the glyphs and symbols in the font file.
Glyphs Slide Show
If you have selected multiple fonts in the top pane, the top row of icons in the Glyphs View are clickable.
- Use the triangle icon to play a slide show of the currently selected fonts. Use the arrow icons to control the direction and speed of the slide show.
- If you like the current font and want to save it for future use, click the add-to-folder icon and FontAgent saves the name of the current font into a set named Player Set.
- Click the slider control to activate and deactivate the current font and make it available for use in your applications. If the font is activated, the slider switch is green.
Customizing the Glyphs View
Use the controls at the bottom on the Glyphs View to customize how the view appears.
- Use the pull-down menu to select the character set provided by the font’s designer that you wish to view.
- Click the numeric thumbwheel control to select the size of the glyph cells in the grid.
- Use the gear icon to specify the foreground and background colors of the displayed glyphs.
Dragging Characters into Your Documents
One of the handiest ways to use the Glyphs View is dragging your selected glyph into your design document. To insert a character into a document, follow these steps:
- Activate the font using the slide switch at the right-top of the Glyphs View.
- Drag the character from the Glyphs View into your document.
- In the document app window, use the Font menu to set the font and style to the correct font for the glyph.
If you forget these simple steps, you can click the question mark icon on the bottom right of the Glyphs View for a helpful reminder.
There’s a Lot More to Like
The Glyphs View is just one of the many ways to view and manage your fonts in FontAgent. To learn more about other FontAgent views and functionality, click here.