Protesilaos Stavrou

Show Font (show-font.el)

Preview fonts in Emacs

This document contains the release notes for each tagged commit on the project’s main git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/show-font.

The newest release is at the top. For further details, please consult the manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/show-font.

Table of Contents

1. Version 0.1.0 on 2024-09-10

With show-font the user has the means to preview fonts inside of Emacs. This can be done in the following ways:

  • The command show-font-select-preview uses the minibuffer to prompt with completion for a font on the system. The selected font is then displayed in a bespoke buffer.
  • The command show-font-list produces a list with all the fonts available on the system. Each font on display is styled with its given character set.
  • The show-font-mode is a major mode that gets activated when the user visits a .ttf or .otf file. It will preview with the font, if it is installed on the system, else it will provide a helpful message and an option to install the font (NOTE 2024-09-10: this only works on Linux).

The previews include a pangram, which is controlled by the user option show-font-pangram. The default value is a playful take on the more familiar “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” phrase. Users can select among a few presets, or define their own custom string.

The function show-font-pangram-p is available for those who wish to experiment with writing their own pangrams (it is not actually limited to the Latin alphabet).

The user option show-font-character-sample provides a more complete character set that is intended for use in full buffer previews (i.e. not in the list of fonts). It can be set to any string. The default value is a set of alphanumeric characters that are commonly used in programming: a good monospaced font should render all of them unambiguously.

Finally, the following faces control the appearance of various elements.

  • show-font-small
  • show-font-regular
  • show-font-medium
  • show-font-large
  • show-font-title
  • show-font-title-small
  • show-font-misc
  • show-font-button