XeTeX ⇒ Bash + Xelatex: Quick font test / preview

[sdaau]

Hi all,

I just wanted to have that type of a preview they have on some font websites, where you type a phrase and it gets rendered in different fonts ... So here is a small bash script (tested on Ubuntu 9.10) which will loop through a directory where .ttf or .otf fonts are places, and will generate a .tex file with a phrase in all those fonts - and will finally call xelatex to generate a pdf based on the tex file.

Excuse the messy comments - and hope some may find it useful,

Cheers!


quickfonttest.sh:

Code: Select all

# to be used with xetex - xelatex

# for texlive:
# tlmgr install xetex xunicode xltxtra fontspec xkeyval euenc metalogo xetex-def

# Must NOT have spaces in font names !!
# Note - some fonts (those with commas in their names? can cause Segmentation fault).

# the script will loop through a directory (assuming it has only .ttf or .otf font files) and will generate a xetex file, which will display a phrase in all the fonts found in that directory; and then it will compile the file with xelatex. (something similar to http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/fontimage.html)

# sudo apt-get install fontforge # for showttf

# bugs - Verbatim doesn't wrap (break lines) and doesn't show footnotesize

OFN=fonttester # output file name (base)
TEXF=$OFN.tex

function becho()
{
	echo "$*" | tee -a $TEXF
}

PHRASE="My Test Phrase"
FONTDIR=/home/USERNAME/.openoffice.org/3/user/fonts

echo "" > "$TEXF" # erase

becho "
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{xunicode}
%\usepackage{xltxtra}
\usepackage{graphicx} % for scalebox
\usepackage{fancyvrb} % for Verbatim
\usepackage{fancybox} % for fbox?

% from fancybox.pdf:
\newenvironment{fminipage}%
  {\begin{Sbox}\begin{minipage}}%
  {\end{minipage}\end{Sbox}\fbox{\TheSbox}}

\begin{document}

"


for ifn in $(find $FONTDIR -type f)
do
	ifnb=$(basename $ifn)
	ifnd=$(dirname $ifn)
	# dont forget closing / in ExtLoc, else "Invalid fontname"
	becho "\begin{fminipage}{\textwidth}"
	becho "\begin{Verbatim}[width=\textwidth,fontsize=\footnotesize]"
	becho "$ifnb"
	# push some info too
	becho "$(showttf $ifn | grep -A 1 language=0.*UniqueID | grep strlen)"
	becho "\end{Verbatim}"
	becho "\fontspec[ExternalLocation={$ifnd/},]{$ifnb}"
	# becho "\setmainfont[ExternalLocation={$ifnd/},]{$ifnb}"
	# becho "\fontsize{48}{48}"
	becho "\scalebox{3}{$PHRASE}"
	becho "\end{fminipage}"
	becho "\ \\"
	becho "\bigskip"
	becho
done

becho "

\end{document}

"

xelatex $TEXF # generates a pdf..
# for debug:
# xelatex -no-pdf fonttester.tex
# xdvipdfmx -E -vv fonttester.xdv

# clean up - leave tex and pdf.
rm $OFN.aux $OFN.log