Free font scaler software for linux

Gnome Font Sampler lets you browse your installed fonts using whatever color, size, attributes (Bold/Italics/Underline), and example text you like.
Main features:
- Quickly compare your fonts
- Select font size, text color, background color, bold, italics, underline, and example text used
- Preview fonts before adding them to the list
- Pretty good keyboard control
- It costs $0 and is Free software
Enhancements:
- New application icon.
- Improved keyboard control (navigate font lists and choose fonts using just the keyboard).

fntsample is a program for making font samples that show Unicode coverage of the font.
The samples are similar in appearance to Unicode charts. Samples can be saved as PDF or PostScript files.
Installation:
The simplest way to compile this package is:
1. `cd to the directory containing the packages source code and type `./configure to configure the package for your system. If youre using `csh on an old version of System V, you might need to type `sh ./configure instead to prevent `csh from trying to execute `configure itself.
Running `configure takes awhile. While running, it prints some messages telling which features it is checking for.
2. Type `make to compile the package.
3. Optionally, type `make check to run any self-tests that come with the package.
4. Type `make install to install the programs and any data files and documentation.
5. You can remove the program binaries and object files from the source code directory by typing `make clean. To also remove the files that `configure created (so you can compile the package for a different kind of computer), type `make distclean. There is also a `make maintainer-clean target, but that is intended mainly for the packages developers. If you use it, you may have to get all sorts of other programs in order to regenerate files that came with the distribution.
Enhancements:
- This release makes it possible to change the default font styles and sizes for headers and numbers displayed on font samples.

FONTpage is a Python font viewing and image-generating utility. It displays system fonts and allows you to change the font size and color, background color, font face, bold, and italics.
It also has the ability to input the text to be displayed, which you can choose to save as a PNG file. It is handy to view fonts and styles quickly, or to make "logo" graphics.
It was written to supersede wxFontView, as the pyGTK toolkit is much lighter and more widely used.
Enhancements:
- New "Display Font" feature opens popup window with complete alphabet (upper and lower case) and 0-9.
- Window shows current font with current size -- use multiple windows to compare different fonts.
- Font size now scales up to 256 pts (was 128)
- Config file will now track last window dimensions when the application is restarted.
- If user font directory directory (~/.fonts) does not exist, FONTpage will create one. This is to facilitate installing and deleting fonts, which FONTpage will only do on a per-user basis. (This is to avoid problems.)

x-fontperf is a small utility to measure font rendering/loading time in an x11 environment. Originally intended to see if there is any notable performance difference between a separate font server and local font rendering.
It actually does three different tests:
1) Loading the same font several times
Gives you an average loading time for this particular font. If you use a font already in use in your x-session this should be really quick as this font will be reused and not actually loaded again (cached)
2) Loading the same font in different sizes (incrementing)
Default is from 6 to 144 pixel. Interesting to see how rendering time increases with font size (see option -v)
3) Loading all available fonts
This should give you a good estimate on average fontloading time. Also a good test to stress your system and check if all fonts are loadable (see option -e)
Sample output:
x-fontperf -v
x-fontperf: Copyright (c) Holger Pfaff - http://pfaff.ws
x-fontperf: version 1.1 from 26-Mar-2004
x-fontperf: connected to server: :0.0
x-fontperf: server vendor: Gentoo Linux (XFree86 4.3.0, revision r3)
x-fontperf: vendor release: 40300000
x-fontperf: total of 6406 fonts found
x-fontperf: basefont: -*-helvetica-*-*-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
x-fontperf: loading basefont 100 times ... 6292 usec 62 usec/font
x-fontperf: loading font from pixel size 6 to 144 ... 2977820 usec 21578 usec/font
x-fontperf: loading all 6406 available fonts ... 34965472 usec 5458 usec/font
Usage:
Usage: x-fontperf ...
-display X-display to use
-v Increase verbosity (may falsify results)
-e Show errors during tests
-n Number of iterations for test 1 [100]
-min Minimum pixel size for test 2 [6]
-max Maximum pixel size for test 2 [144]
-foundry Foundry of font [*]
-family Family of font [helvetica]
-weight Weight of font [*]
-slant Slant of font [*]
-setwidth Set width of font [*]
-addstyle Additional style of font [*]
-pixelsize Pixel size of font [12]
-pointsize Point size of font [*]
-resolutionX X resolution of font [*]
-resolutionY Y resolution of font [*]
-spacing Spacing of font [*]
-avgwidth Average width of font [*]
-registry Registry of font [iso8859]
-encoding Encoding of font [1]
Verbosity can be increased in three steps by specifying -v several times. No-
tation -vvv is not supported. Use -v -v -v. Errors opening fonts are not shown
by default. Use -e to see them.
-n specifies the number of iterations for test 1. The default of 100 (shown in
brackets) should be ok for most systems. Increase/decrease values for fast/slow
systems
-min/-max specifies the minimum/maximum pixel size for test 2. Pixel sizes are
incremented by one.
The last block of arguments is for specifying the basefont to use for tests 1
and 2. These follow the standard x11 font naming scheme. Again: defaults are
shown in brackets.
Enhancements:
- first public version 1.0

fontimage project is a small, portable tool that generates PNG images of text strings directly from outline font files.
Main features:
- only depnends on libpng and freetype, should be very portable
- handles charaters outside of ascii range
- Licensed under GNU GPL
- Tested on Fedora Core 5 and CentOS 4.3

VSOFont is a small library used to draw very simple and fast user definable 2D vector fonts. At some point in time, when working with handheld devices, the font functions GLUT offered proved to be too massive. so i decided to write a very simple 3D vector text system using OpenGL myself. The application is coded in ANSI C.
Enhancements:
- added vsofont_read_font_from_memory().
- changed vsofont_read_font() to vsofont_read_font_from_file().
- example shows now how to draw a bolded string.
- VSOFONT header file should now work in C++ projects.
- small optimizations here and there.

Font::Scripts::AP is a Perl module for memory representation of a TTFBuilder Attachment Point database (APDB).

SYNOPSIS

use Font::Scripts::AP;
$ap = Font::Scripts::AP->read_font($ttf_file, $ap_file, %opts);
$ap->make_classes();

INSTANCE VARIABLES

cmap

Reference to the Microsoft cmap within the font.

font

Reference to a font structure. read_font will cause at least the post, cmap, loca, and name tables to be read in.

glyphs

An array of references to glyph data structures, indexed by glyphID. Stucture elements are:

uni

Unicode scalar value, if any, as specified in the APDB. (decimal integer)

gnum

Actual glyph ID from font.

post

Actual Postscript name from font.

Note: The uni, gnum and post values are based on the UID, GID, and PSName fields of the APDB. If there are descrepancies between the APDB and the fonts internal tables, then for calcuating the above three values, priority is given first to UID field, then PSName field, and finally GID.

glyph

Reference to glyph structure read from font.

line

Line number in APDB where glyph is defined.

points

A hash of references to attachment point structures for this glyph, keyed by attachment point type (aka name). Each AP structure contains

name

The name (type in TTFBuilder terminology) of the attachment point

x, y

X and Y coordinates for the attachment point

line

Line number in APDB where this point is defined.

components

Present if the glyph is a composite. Is a reference to an array of component structures. Each component structure includes:

bbox

comma separated list of bounding box coordinates, i.e., x1, y1, x2, y2

uni

Unicode scalar value, if any, of the component. (decimal integer)

Note: The following instance variables contain the actual text read from the APDB. If there are descrepancies between the APDB and the font, these values may differ from corresponding values given above. Therefore these values should not be used except for diagnostic purposes.

UID

Unicode scalar value, if any, as specified in the APDB. (string of hex digits)

PSName

Postscript name, if any, as specified in the APDB

GID

Glyph id, if any, as specified in the APDB

classes

Created by "make_classes", this is a hash keyed by class name returning an array of GIDs for glyphs that are in the class. Classes are identified by extensions (part after a .) on the post name of each glyph. For each such extension, two classes are defined. The first is the class of all glyphs that have that extension (class name is the extension). The second is the class of nominal glyphs corresponding to the glyphs with that extension (class name is the extension but with the prefix no_).

lists

Created by "make_classes", this is a hash keyed by attachment point name (as modified by "make_point") returning an array of GIDs for glyphs that have the given attachment point.

vecs

If defined, this variable will be updated by "make_classes". It is a hash, keyed by attachment point name (as modified by "make_point") returning a bit vec bit array, indexed by GID, each bit set to 1 if the corresponding glyph has the given attachment point.

ligclasses

Optionally created by make_classes if ligatures are requested and they exist. The base forms class is no_code while the ligatures are held in code.

WARNINGS

If -errorfh not set, this accumulates any warning or error messages encountered.

WARNINGS

Count of number fo warnings or errors encountered.

GNU font utilities to allow conversion of a scanned type specimen image into an outline (PostScript or Metafont) font. These fonts can be used with Ghostscript or TeX.
Since the fontutils were originally written in the early 1990s, other programs have been developed which do a better job of some parts of this task. Here is a list of the fontutils programs with indications of their current status:
- imgrotate: rotates images 90 degrees, an inefficiently-implemented subset of pnmrotate (from netpbm).
- imageto: extracts individual characters from a large image; still useful.
- fontconvert: some features may still be useful, such as creating a tfm file from a bitmap.
- charspace: allows non-interactive side bearing specification, so possibly still useful. On the other hand, fontforge allows interactive specification, and has a very nice preview window for testing side bearings.
- gsrenderfont: a shell script that converts outline fonts to bitmaps at a given size. This is called from TeX programs under certain circumstances. The version here has long been replaced by the scripts in the TeX distributions.
- limn: does the actual conversion from bitmaps to splines. These days, youre much better off using autotrace or potrace.
- bzrto: conversion from the generic homegrown `bzr (Bezier) format output by limn to PostScript Type 1, PostScript Type 3, or Metafont. Obsolete.
- bpltobzr: translate the binary bzr format into an equivalent text format `bpl (bezier property list), for editing. Fortunately, a full-featured free outline font editor, fontforge, has been written (by George Williams).
- xbfe: bitmap font editor for shapes and metrics; astonishingly, it seems there are still no bitmap editors for any format except BDF, so still useful.