FontShower

This essay does not describe an existing computer program, just one that should exist. This essay is about a suggested student project in Java programming. This essay gives a rough overview of how it might work. I have no source, object, specifications, file layouts or anything else useful to implementing this project. Everything I have to say to help you with this project is written below. I am not prepared to help you implement it; I have too many other projects of my own.

I do contract work for a living, which could include writing a program such as this. However, I don’t do people’s homework for them. That just robs them of an education.

You have my full permission to implement this project in any way you please and to keep all the profits from your endeavor.

Here is a simple project for a newbie. I have already implement two versions of this project myself one for AWT and one for Swing.

First you get a dynamically generate a list of all possible java fonts installed on the machine with code similar to this.

This program is very similar to the Conversion Amanuensis. You might start with that and modify it. Just leave out the ConverterGrid class.

Your program is an Applet that lets you choose:

font family
font style
foreground colour
background colour

then it displays the following test pangrams in the selected font family, style and colour.

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’s back.
Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.
Mr. Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx.
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
01234567890
€†™´¸¢©¤°÷ ½¼¾>¡¿«‘<¯µ ·¬ªº¶±£"»’® §¹²³ß×™¨¥
ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉ ÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔ ÕÖØÙÚÛÜÝÞÿ
àáâãäåæçèé êëìíîïðñòóô õöøùúûüýþÿ
!"#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\^_z{|}~
uvw wW gq9 2z 5s il17|!j oO08 `'" ;: ,. m nn rn {[()]}u

You can use a JColorChooser to select the foreground and background colour and a JComboBox to select the family, style, and size, and use a JTextArea for the test message, Or do it with AWT using ColorChooser, Choice and TextArea.

It will be a useful tool for all Java programmers.

For hints on why I selected that test message see Proofreader Font project.

You need to set up listeners so that if anything changes, you recompute the display.

If you want to get fancy, display the font family menu using a font sample, but be careful, some fonts don’t work that way, like dingbats.

Here is Fahd Sharrif’s implementation: Sorry, you need Java 1.3+ to run this Applet.

font finder project
Fonts
FontShower amanuensis
Proofreader Font project
Reuters Unicode Displayer

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