http://docs.kde.org/
 

Font Viewer

Burkhard Lück

Revision Plasma 5.12 (2018-03-31)

KFontview is an application to view and install different types of fonts:

  • TrueType® (.ttf)

  • OpenType (otf, .ttf)

  • PostScript® type 1 (file extension on Windows® & OS/2 .pfb/.pfm; on UNIX®/Linux® .pfa/.afm)

  • BDF (Bitmap Distribution Format, file extension .bdf)

  • PCF (Portable Compiled Format, file extension .pcf)

You can use it as standalone program to preview and install a font downloaded from the Internet. In the preview you can check that the font has all characters you need.

Additionally KFontview can be launched from the System Settings module Font Management to use the extended preview capabilities of KFontview.

Alternatively you can use the Font Management module to install, remove, preview and manage all fonts on your system.

KFontview application

KFontview's Standard Preview displays your font in several different sizes using a pangram (a sentence using every letter of the alphabet at least once). So you can get a good idea of what it will look like. From the drop down box in the toolbar you can choose additional preview types:

  • All Characters displays all characters provided by the font in one size.

  • Unicode Block: The Unicode standard arranges groups of characters together in blocks

  • Unicode Script: In Unicode, a script is a collection of letters and other written signs used to represent textual information in one or more writing systems

  • Change Text: Using this button opens the Preview String dialog where you can insert a user defined text. This feature enables you to check that a font supports the characters you need.

You can use the zoom buttons or the mousewheel to change the font size in all preview types.

In Unicode Block and Unicode Script preview mode additional tooltip info's are displayed hovering a character with the mouse pointer: The character's Unicode Category and the value in UCS-4, UTF-16, UTF-8 and as XML Decimal Entity.

To install a font you downloaded from the Internet, click the Install button in the lower-right corner.

You can install the font for personal us only available to you or system-wide available for all users, the latter will require administrator privileges.

Fonts are often provided in an archive format like zip. Open these archives with Ark which provides a simple previewer for fonts. To make use of the extended capabilities of KFontview extract the fonts and open them in KFontview.

Applications need to be restarted to use of the newly installed fonts.