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I am looking for software - preferably freeware or open source - for either Windows or Linux that allows me to type in a phrase, and have that phrase simultaneously previewed for a batch of around 300 fonts in large or exported to PNG images.

What is commonly available from a Google search or common programs:

  • Most word processing software allows a font preview without the ability to specify that text - manually changing the font of some template text doesn't allow a side-by-side comparison and is tiredsome.
  • Various font management software exists that allows custom text to be previewed for all (or selected) system fonts but in a manner where only a few are visible on the screen requiring scrolling which eliminates the ability to compare.
  • Font download websites offer preview text but around a third of these fonts aren't on those websites.

I am not after the above.

What I need:

  • A free (ideally) solution that allows me to type (or specify in a script) a phrase that becomes previewed for all fonts on the system or specified folder in large font size (2-3 fonts visible per page) or software which produces preview images of one font per image.
  • Preferably, software which allows unsatisfactory fonts to be eliminated from the comparison (could include hiding of collapse feature) - in case of preview images I can delete from folder manually as I review.
  • Ideally, auto size of fonts to fill the space as there will be great variation between heights and widths even with the same numeric font size.
  • Something as close to this as possible

A scripting solution (windows or linux) without the need of a server would be adequate too.

Thank you in advance for your suggestions.

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  • What would you need a server for? If you can't find something satisfactory, those requirements should be pretty easy to program in say, something like Tkinter in Python.
    – Brōtsyorfuzthrāx
    Jul 14, 2022 at 20:10

1 Answer 1

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Nexus font is a free font manager for windows.

It can recursively scan custom folders for font files and can create a library from them, including system installed ones.

It does "dynamic loading" of all fonts in library, and a "virtual install", making them available to most running applications without installing them to the system, preventing pollution and permanent slowdown.

Fonts can be categorized into multiple "Collections" to user discretion and searched for. Custom text can be typed for preview, along with a custom foreground and background colors.

From the list you can pick an arbitrary selection of fonts and press Print to automatically generate a (multi-page) printable preview of the selection.

Print is not very customizable, but if you have a system installed software printer that allows saving as PNG or PDF file (most Windows 10+ now have a builtin PDF printer), you can then generate files for your previews.

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