Emacs: show-font version 0.3.0

2025-04-26

This package lets you preview a font inside of Emacs. It does so in three ways:

• Prompt for a font on the system and display it in a buffer.
• List all known fonts in a buffer, with a short preview for each.
• Provide a major mode to preview a font whose file is among the installed ones.

Sources:

• Package name (GNU ELPA): show-font
• Official manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/show-font
• Change log: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/show-font-changelog
• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/show-font
• Sample pictures: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2024-09-10-emacs-show-font-0-1-0/
• Backronym: Should Highlight Only With the Family Of the Named Typeface.

Below are the release notes.

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Version 0.3.0 on 2025-04-26

This version adds some refinements to an already stable package.

The command show-font-list is an alias for show-font-tabulated

The show-font-list command was using a custom buffer that listed font families and their corresponding short preview. It did not have any other feature.

I made changes under the hood to rely on the built-in tabulated-list-mode which is a standard and gives us the option to sort by column. The show-font-list is thus an alias for the new command show-font-tabulated. Right now the sorting facility only applies to reversing the name-based order. In the future we may have more columns, such as if we describe a font as “Latin”, “Greek”, etc.

The tabulated list marks fonts that cannot be previewed

In the past, the font listing would include families that could not display the show-font-pangram or, indeed, any Latin character. Those would be rendered as empty boxes.

I have now introduced a simple heuristic to test that the given family supports Latin characters. If it does not, then (i) it is highlighted with a different colour, (ii) it shows “No preview” instead of the pangram, and (iii) it displays the information in the Emacs default font family. Some families do not play nice with this approach though, as they pass the test but still do not display any Latin characters. This happens with icon fonts.

The long-term goal is to support different scripts and show the appropriate text for each of them.

The show-font-sentences-sample adds more to the show-font-select-preview

The new user option show-font-sentences-sample is a list of strings that can be used to exhibit common patterns and letter combinations. The default value is carefully designed to show if a font family is stylistically consistent, such as with how it draws i, l, t, or h, n, m, and so on. Plus, it teaches you some obscure words like “scholarch”, “antipode”, and “heteroclite”: use them with your Greek friends—and if they do not know those words, then they must buy you a café frappé!

Miscellaneous

• The face show-font-title-small is an obsolete alias for the more appropriately named show-font-title-in-listing.
• The prompt used by the command show-font-select-preview now correctly uses its own history and default value.
• The default value of the user option show-font-character-sample includes some more patterns to better test the adequacy of a font family. This sample is displayed in the buffer produced by the command show-font-select-preview.