Main Window Overview

Each font window has two main parts:

• A navigation panel on the left, which is where you select the fonts you want to view or manage.
• A viewing panel on the right, which is where you choose how you want to see the selected font.

You can have several font windows open simultaneously, which is useful for comparing and choosing fonts as well as for managing them if you use drag and drop. Screen layout and font browsing settings are saved on exit and restored when you next run the program.

Some of the other features illustrated by this screen include:

• Visual indication of installed fonts.
• Browse for folders, or enter paths directly.
• Combine fonts in a folder and all its subfolders into a single list for browsing.

Font Management

The Font Thing provides many ways of managing fonts, including:

• Drag and drop (within The Font Thing, and from Windows Explorer etc.)
• Commands on the main menu and tool bar
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Clipboard support (copy and paste font files, to and from The Font Thing)
• Context menus.

Many of these are shown in the adjacent screen shot, which focuses on the font list context menu (probably the easiest way of managing fonts if you're running The Font Thing at low resolution or in a small window). Note that you can perform an action on several fonts at once.
 

Single Font Sample, Saved Text Samples

This screen shows the installed font list with the single font sample view.

You can browse any of the font lists using the mouse or arrow keys, or type a font name to jump directly to the closest match.

The sample text box shows an example of the selected font in sizes from 4 to 128 points. You can enter the sample text directly, or use the drop-down list of your standard text samples. These can be set up on the spot (as shown), or on the program's Options screen.
 

Multiple Font Sample, Custom Colours

This screen shows the multiple sample view, which provides another useful way of browsing and comparing fonts. It displays sample text in many fonts at once, showing either:

• The selected fonts from the current font list
• All fonts in the current font list.

You can type whatever sample text you like into the box at the top of the page, which doubles as a drop-down list of your standard text samples: the font examples below are updated immediately. You can also change the font size from 4 to 128 points.

The screen has the text labels on the tool bar hidden, the font window maximised, and one of the toolbars moved, to give more room for viewing fonts. You can hide the menu bar or tool bars completely, or drag them to more convenient locations (docked to other edges of the main window, or left floating).

This screen also demonstrates the use of custom colours for the font sample text, background and extra information.
 

Font Filtering

You can apply a filter so that only fonts of certain types are shown, using any combination of the following:

• Serif -- Proportional fonts with serifs (e.g. Times New Roman)
• Sans Serif -- Proportional fonts without serifs (e.g. Arial)
• Monospaced -- Monospaced (fixed-width) fonts, with or without serifs (e.g. Courier New)
• Script -- Fonts designed to look like handwriting (e.g. Comic Sans MS)
• Decorative -- Novelty fonts (e.g. Old English)
• Pictorial -- Symbols and dingbats (e.g. Symbol, Wingdings)
• Other -- Fonts that don't fit into the classifications above, or that don't contain classification information.

Filters are set using the main menu or the optional filter bar (shown in the adjacent screenshot). When a filter is in effect, the number of matching fonts is displayed as well as the total number of fonts.

This screen also gives you a clearer example of the character set view. You can change the number of columns according to your needs, and display or hide ASCII values and plain text characters (they are useful when working with dingbat and symbol fonts).
 

Character Zoom

You can zoom in on individual characters from the character set view. The settings for showing ASCII values and plain text characters are are carried through to the zoomed display as well (both enabled in this example).
 

Detailed Font Information

Information contained within the font file is displayed on the Font Info page under the following headings:

• Name Details
• Version
• Copyright
• Trademark
• Vendor
• Designer
• Description
• License
• Basic Typographical Metrics
• Windows Metrics.

Hyperlinks (e.g. to the font vendor's web site) are created if appropriate information is included in the font file. Examples of this appear in the middle of the adjacent screenshot.
 

Font Notes

You can display and edit notes for fonts, for instance the readme or license information files distributed with fonts, or your own notes such as what a font would be good for, where you've used it, etc.

This screenshot also shows the font collections list, which is one of the ways of grouping fonts for more convenient access. Fonts can be listed in as many collections as you wish, without duplicating or otherwise affecting the font files themselves.