[X4U] Need utility to produce type specimens

[David Ledger]

At 19:07 -0800 23/11/11, John Baltutis wrote:
>On 11/23/11, catsoul <catsoul at thinkplan.org> wrote:
>>
>>  Hello...I'm looking for a free utility or method to produce specimens of all
>>of my fonts, and I have *many* fonts...
>>
>>  Can anyone suggest some good titles to try?
>
>AFAIK, Font Book can display them, but you might have to take 
>screenshots, then
>paste them into a TextEdit document.

It would need someone used to scripting to do it, but there may be a 
ready-made script out there.

My approach (as a coder/scripter) would be to make a list of fonts 
(this may need AppleScript to get a definitive list rather than a 
list of font filenames), and use shell script to generate the 
PostScript required to print the samples, then send the .ps file to a 
PostScript printer. PostScript is a reverse-Polish script/programming 
language.

I did this 15 - 20 years ago to print samples of the fonts available 
on a (Brother?) laser printer. There the list came from a request to 
the printer rather than those available on a system, but the 
principle is the same. The computer would have been a Sun workstation 
(pre-Solaris).

If you google for a PostScript solution you may find one. I may have 
mine on floppy somewhere, but that's not much use now. It would take 
some effort to re-do it now, but less than for someone who has never 
delved into PostScript. Not sure how you would get the .ps file into 
the printer from a Mac to a modern printer. I think I can FTP to mine.

David


-- 
David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
HP-UX specialist of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
david.ledger at ivdcs.co.uk
www.ivdcs.co.uk