Fonty Python

Fonty is a font viewer and manager for Gnu/Linux. Use it to view, gather and manage fonts. You can install and uninstall fonts to your user fonts folder for temporary use in other apps.

Upgrade Notice

Due to upgrade issues, if you find odd problems with your fonts, try this:

  1. Uninstall all your Pogs.
  2. Go into your fonts directory.. {UF_DIR} ..and remove all remaining font files.
  3. Using Fonty, install one Pog
  4. Go back into your fonts directory and look for the links which should be there now.
  5. If that all went well, the upgrade worked and Fonty should be fine.

The Idea | User Font Paths | The Layout | Menus | Hushing | Shortcuts | Tips | Localization | Bugs | Licence

Ye Olde Basic Idea

You visually gather fonts into a "Pog", and then install it. All its fonts will be available to other apps. When you finish your work, uninstall the Pog.

I pinched the word "Pog" from "typography". It means "collection", "group", "bunch", "box", "case", "stack" or "pile" — you get the picture.

Your fonts never move from where they live, neither are copies made; only links to the original files are used to install the fonts into your user fonts directory.

For example, you might have a Pog called "Logos" into which you place all the fonts needed to design a logo. When you want to work, install the "Logos" Pog and start your design app. All those fonts will now appear in Inkscape, the Gimp, etc. When you're done, uninstall "Logos" and all those fonts go away. (The links to the original files are removed, not the actual font files!)

Fonty is also great for just looking at fonts, wherever they are on your computer, without having to install them first. She also has a command line, allowing very quick use. You can install/uninstall Pogs without having to start the entire gui, which is neat.

If you have any problems, please open a ticket: {TICKET_URL}

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User Fonts Paths

Your fontypython directory

Where all your Pogs are kept.

{FP_DIR}

Your user fonts directory

{UF_DIR}

If there's a dot in front (like .local) that means the directory is "hidden". You might not see it in your file manager.

Whatever it's called and wherever it is, any fonts listed in here are "installed". Fonty's job is to shuttle fonts in and out of here so you don't have to.

If your fonts are not working, it may be that you don't have a user fonts directory. You'll have to search around and figure it out.

Your fontconfig directory is

{FC_DIR}

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Layout

On the left are the Source (top) and Target (bottom) controls. On the right is the Font View.

  The Sources

Font Sources are directories or Pogs. There are tabs for you to choose.

(Beware the include sub-folders option in Settings. When checked, Fonty will look for fonts in all the sub-directories within your chosen Source directory. If there are lots of fonts in there, she might hang. Use this with caution.)

  The Targets

These Pogs are the Targets: you put fonts into them.

For Targets, you can select many Pogs at once by holding control (Ctrl) as you select them; this is for installing/uninstalling/etc. many Pogs at once.

Pog management buttons

The managements buttons all work with the selected target Pog(s). It's a little counter-intuitive sometimes. Sorry. It was done because you can select multiple targets. (But not multiple sources.)

  The Font View

Fonts in your Source will be visible in the Font View. You can click on the fonts you want to select. At the bottom of the Font View are controls to filter, page and manage the fonts you are looking at.

The Font View will also attempt to display in columns, so you can see many fonts at once. The columns vary by point size and the width of your window. You can control the number of columns in the Settings.

The Fonts themselves

Each font appears with some appropriate information. Here are the basics:

Font controls

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 Hushing Fonts

On Linux there are often too many fonts installed; it's hard to choose among them. To work with only the fonts that you install via Fonty, hit Ctrl+H to hush. Your apps will now list only your desired fonts. (Until you un-hush.)

Simply install Pogs via Fonty as normal and start a hush. In your other apps, you should see the difference. (For e.g. go into Inkscape and open the "Text & Font" dialogue.)

The "Hush Pog" and a mild Warning

As you can imagine, a hush could reject many crucial fonts...

In order to make sure that your system has a few it can use, Fonty requires you to choose a Pog that is installed when hushing. Call it a "Hush Pog".

Create a Pog of your own and put some typical system fonts into it. Good choices are: DejaVu, Sans, Serif, Mono, Free-, Liberation-, Ubuntu- and so forth. This depends on your locale and preferences, therefore we leave it to you.

(These kinds of fonts are usually found in "/usr/share/fonts".)

Fonty will ask for a Pog when you start a hush; select the one you prepared.

It's not serious, but you have been warned.

Details

This all requires a working fontconfig setup, which most modern Linux distros have. Fonty looks for the directory:

{HOME}/.config/fontconfig/conf.d 

If it's not found, you can't hush fonts. (If you have more information, please open a ticket.)

Fonty writes a config file which instructs fontconfig to:

The effect is usually instantaneous, but you may need to restart certain apps for them to notice. (If you find there are still fonts appearing that you do not want to see, please open a ticket.)

Reversing a hush: the Un-hush

To switch all the system fonts on again, go into the hush screen where you can "Un-hush".

Your "Hush Pog" is not uninstalled; do this manually,

If there's a problem, you can also manually delete the config file. Look for it on this path, and delete it:

{FC_PAF} 

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Menus

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Shortcut keys

If shortcut keys don't work, click in the filter text box. This seems to kick them back to life. Don't ask me what's going on....

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Tips

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Localization Tips

If localization is not working it could be there is none for your language; it can also be a problem with missing packages in your distro. This is what I installed on my system while I was developing: (Replace the last two letters with your own language code.)

ENCODING TIP: Check your LANG variable. Open a console and type: echo $LANG If it reports "C" or "POSIX" or it's blank then you will be running under ANSI (ASCII) encoding only. This means that unusually named fonts and Pogs will likely be invisible to you, function badly, or cause errors. I am putting out fires as fast as I can, but these bugs are hard to find.

To see what other encodings you could be using, type:

 locale -a 

You should see a list of locales. If you see one ending in "utf8" that looks like it fits your language, then change your system to use it. You should do this via your system-settings gui, but you can do it temporarily like this:

 LANG=xx_YY.encoding 

(Where xx_YY and encoding are replaced by you.) After that, start Fonty again.

If you want to help translate, please drop us a ticket on: {TICKET_URL}

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Bugs

 Fatal crashes and Dangerous Fonts.

Some fonts stick in Fonty's throat and crash her. If you wait a moment, a window should appear and tell you which font is to blame. You should move that font entirely away from where it is. Start Fonty again to resume.

If you are stuck, go into your "fontypython" folder and open the file named "lastFontBeforeSegfault", that will be the culprit!

To find your fontypython directory, see the Info section in this help. You can also ask Fonty for the path. On the command-line, run:

 fontypython -d 

Checking Fonts

If Fonty will not start, you have a really bad font somewhere. On the command-line, use the -c flag to check all fonts (recursively) on the given path:

 fontypython -c /some/folder 

Any fonts that are likely to kill Fonty will be recorded in a file named "segfonts" (look in your fontypython directory). After you do this, Fonty should work again.

When Fonty starts, she checks your Pog files. If there are any Pogs that cannot be read for whatever reason, then they are renamed to ".badpog". You should go in there and do some sleuthing.

If you are stuck, post a report on https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=fontypython. Please run Fonty from the command line so that you can copy any error displayed.

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Licence

 Fonty Python is Copyright (C) 2006, 2017 Donn.C.Ingle.
This file is part of Fonty Python.
Fonty Python is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
Fonty Python is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with Fonty Python. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/

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