FontShower for Swing  FontShower for Swing

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©1996-2013 Roedy Green, Canadian Mind Products
To view this page, you should have the most recent Java installed 32-bit JRE (Java Runtime Environment) 1.7.0_25. Older versions have a security flaw.
This Applet will run online in your browser, but it is a hybrid you can also download, install and run it on your own machine as standalone application. It will start and run faster if you do that. It will also work safely even if you have disabled Java in your browser.
This Applet will help you write Java code. It will show you what Swing fonts are available via Java on your machine, and what they look like in a variety of styles, sizes and colours. There is another version of this program called FontShower for AWT. It display colours both as decimal and hex numbers, so it is more useful if you are primarily choosing colours rather than fonts. Use the Unicode Applet if you want to view the entire Unicode character set.

If you select the all fonts option, it will display the true heights of a 10 point font. Excusing themselves with artistic licence, font designers make their type sometimes up to twice as tall as requested or as small as half as tall. It makes some sense for fonts that also render Chinese to increase the size to ensure any Chinese rendered will still be legible. You might use these numbers to adjust the font sizes selected in css or Java to fully or partially compensate.

Sorry, you need Java 1.6 or later to run this Applet. If the font of interest supported all the characters, the display would look like this:
all characters

If, FontShower, the above Font Shower for Swing Java Applet (that can also be run as an application) does not work…

  1. If Copy/Paste (Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V) do not work, you can turn them back on by modifying your java.policy file. This is not for the novice or faint of heart. instructions Your alternative is to download this program and run it without a browser.
  2. Often problems can be fixed simply by clicking the reload button on your browser.
  3. Make sure you have both JavaScript and Java enabled in your browser.
  4. This Java Applet (that can also be run as an application) needs 32-bit (not 64-bit) Java 1.6 or later. For best results use the older 1.7.0_21 not the latest buggy 1.7.0_25. In the Java Control Panel, configure medium security to allow vanilla unsigned applets to run.
  5. You also need a recent browser.
  6. It works under any operating system that supports Java e.g. W2K/XP/W2003/Vista/W2008/W7-32/W7-64/W8-32/W8-64/W2012/Linux/LinuxARM/LinuxX86/LinuxX64/Ubuntu/Solaris/SolarisSPARC/SolarisSPARC64/SolarisX86/SolarisX64/OSX
  7. You should see the Applet hybrid above looking much like this screenshot. If you don’t, the following hints should help you get it working:
  8. Especially if this Applet hybrid has worked before, try clearing the browser cache and rebooting.
  9. To ensure your Java is up to date, check with Wassup. First, download it and run it as an application independent of your browser, then run it online as an Applet to add the complication of your browser.
  10. If the above Applet hybrid does not work, check the Java console for error messages.
  11. If the above Applet hybrid does not work, you might have better luck with the downloadable version available below.
  12. If you are using Mac OS X and would like an improved Look and Feel, download the QuaQua look & feel from randelshofer.ch/quaqua. UnZip the contained quaqua.jar and install it in ~/Library/Java/Extensions or one of the other ext dirs.
  13. If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, 8 or 9, try another browser. Seriously. Microsoft has taken great pains, over and over, to screw up Java and every other multi-platform standardisation.
  14. If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, 8 or 9, you must click to allow blocked content permission for Active X to run. This also gives permission to Java to run. Click the Information bar, and then click Allow blocked content. Unfortunately, this also allows dangerous ActiveX code to run. However, you must do this in order to get access to perfectly-safe Java Applets running in a sandbox. This is part of Microsoft’s war on Java. Don’t put up with it! Use a different browser.
  15. If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, makes sure the Java Plug-In SSV helper add-in is installed and enabled. If it is not, try reinstalling the Java JRE.
  16. If you have Windows 7 64-bit and Internet Explorer 64-bit, in theory you can use 64-bit Java, but I never been able to get it to work.
  17. Try upgrading to a more recent version of your browser, or try a different browser e.g. Firefox, SeaMonkey, Safari or Avant.
  18. If you still can’t get the program working click HELP for more detail.
  19. If you can’t get the above Applet hybrid working after trying the advice above and from the HELP button below, have bugs to report or ideas to improve the program or its documentation, please send me an email atemail Roedy Green.
Java powered   Get New Java  Get New Browser   Help
FontShower is displaying the Swing fonts available on your machine via Java. Other people will have different fonts installed and will see different selections available via Java on their machines. If your machine is configured to show the crisp anti-aliased fonts by default, you will will no difference between the anti-aliased and plain version. This is a Good Thing ™. You can get Windows to anti-alias by default with Start ⇒ Control Panel ⇒ Display ⇒ Effects ⇒ Smooth edges of screenfonts

Your browser will see a slightly different set of fonts than this Java Applet does. Java has a few extra private fonts, and some browser fonts don’t work with Java.

Some of the fonts may just show empty squares. These are older 8-bit fonts that don’t support 16-bit Unicode used by Java. Don’t necessarily delete them ( by clicking Control Panel ⇒ fonts ⇒ delete) since word processing documents, or the DOS (Disk Operating System) box, may still be using them. on the other hand, pruning out ugly fonts you never use will speed up your machine.

You may not notice any difference with font-smoothing anti-aliasing. Anti-aliasing does not work on some machines. Look for the anti-alias smoothing especially in very large font sizes in capital W in the fonts with thin spidery diagonals, e.g. Bodoni, Book Antiqua, Garamond, Serif and Zapf Calligraphic.

Hint: If you put the cursor on the font family dialog box, you can scroll up and down using up or down arrow key to display all possible font samples very rapidly.

To compare two fonts side by side, download the FontShower jar and run two copies of it standalone. To see how all possible Unicode glyphs render in all supported fonts, see the Unicode Applet.

Fonts that show unusually large numbers of glyphs
Font Number of Glyphs
Arial Unicode MS 50377
Bitstream Cyberbit 29934
LastResort 6207
Everson Mono Unicode 4899

FontShower will only show Fonts supported under Java.

Font Support Under Java
Font Type Extension Java version 1.6Windows Java version 1.6Linux Java version 1.6Fedora Old Java Windows Notes
OpenType
(TrueType internally)		 otf High-end fonts for Windows.
OpenType
(PostScript Adobe CCF (Composite Container Format) internally)		 otf High end PostScript fonts. You can detect these by the file signature { 0x4F, 0x54, 0x54, 0x4F } — the string "OTTO", at the head of the file.
TrueType ttf Most common font for Windows.
PostScript pfm/pfb Older style PS fonts. Supported by PostScript printer hardware. Windows itself supports PS fonts, at least with Adobe Type Manager, but Java ignores them.
Bitmap fon Used primarily for small font sizes. Come only a small set of point sizes.
Vector outline fon These are obsolete. Used by Windows without Java.
8-bit fonts any Java needs 16-bit fonts. It won’t use 8-bit fonts directly. Old or specialty 8-bit fonts can be used by stitching them together with a Unicode mapping, a daunting task.
SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) fonts svg Vector fonts used in Linux. They tend to be free. Java does not out-the-box support them. Opera 10 beta supports them, and allows them to be downloaded with a web page so you can use fonts the viewer does not necessarily already have installed.

AWT (Advanced Windowing Toolkit) will only support the five basic logical fonts, unless you paint on a Canvas, however oddly under Fedora and AWT you can use up to 82 of your installed fonts. If you try to use more, you get an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException. The above information may be incorrect or may become incorrect at any time. Feel free to try any fonts with Java on any platform. The worst that could happen is they won’t work.

PackageVersionReleasedLicenceLanguageNotes 
fontshower
FontShower		 2.9 2009-09-30 free Java
more info ❘ precis ❘ screenshot ❘ browse source repository
for the current version of FontShower.
Displays Swing fonts available to Java on your machine in various styles, sizes and colours. Displays true font heights.
download 737K zip for FontShower Java source, compiled class files, jar and documentation to run on your own machine either as an application or an Applet.

Runs on any OS that supports Java e.g. W2K/XP/W2003/Vista/W2008/W7-32/W7-64/W8-32/W8-64/W2012/Linux/LinuxARM/LinuxX86/LinuxX64/Ubuntu/Solaris/SolarisSPARC/SolarisSPARC64/SolarisX86/SolarisX64/OSX.

First install the most recent Java.

To install, extract the zip download with WinZip, (or similar unzip utility) into any directory you please, often J:\ — ticking off the use folder names option.

To check out the corresponding source from the Subversion repository, use the TortoiseSVN repo-browser to
access fontshower source in repository with [Tortoise] Subversion client on wush.net/svn/mindprod/com/mindprod/fontshower/.

After you have installed the jar, you can run it as an application. Type:

java -jar J:\com\mindprod\fontshower\fontshower.jar

adjusting as necessary to account for where the jar file is.

download ASP PAD XML program description for the current version of FontShower.

FontShower is free.
$1989.00 US donated so far. If the CMP utilities solved your problem, please donate a buck or two, or donate to one of the charities featured in the footer public service ads throughout the website and get a tax receipt.
Full source included. You may even include the source code, modified or unmodified in free/commercial open source/proprietary programs that you write and distribute. Non-military use only.
  
 
anti-aliasing
browser Fonts shows what fonts your browser supports
ClearType
colour
Fonts
FontShower for AWT
FontShower Student Project
other downloads
point
Reuters Unicode Displayer
Rich Franzen’s colourwheel Applet
Unicode
CMP homejump to top

available on the web at:

 http://mindprod.com/applet/fontshower.html
  

optional Replicator mirror
of mindprod.com
on local hard disk J:

 J:\mindprod\applet\fontshower.html
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Please email your , letters to the editor, errors, omissions, typos, formatting errors, ambiguities, unclear wording, broken/redirected link reports, suggestions to improve this page or comments to Roedy Green : feedback email. If you want your message, your name or email kept confidential, not considered for public posting, please explicitly specify that. Unless you state otherwise, I will treat your message as a letter to the editor that I may or may not publish in the feedback section. After that, it will be too late to retract it. If you disagree with something I said, especially when sending an ad-hominem attack, a rant composed mainly of obscenities or a death threat, please quote the offending passage and cite the web page where you found it, tell me why you think it is wrong, and, if possible, provide some supporting evidence. I can’t very well fix erroneous or ambiguous text if I can’t find it.
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