Make a Font “Contact Sheet” in InDesign

James says:

Adobe has one for free:
I modified it a few years ago to do a custom font sample book for our customer.

Jongware says:

If you restrict yourself to OpenType and TrueType fonts (which is rather logical, as these are the ones with interesting glyphs), you can read the number of glyphs if you know the file format.

… Hey … but I know the file format! So I whipped up this script. It’s a stand-alone, I leave it to the writer of the original to integrate it.

myFile = File(app.selection[0].appliedFont.location);
myFile.open(“r”);
myFile.encoding = “binary”; // Important!

// Read TTF/OTF header
hdr = getUlong(myFile);
if (hdr != 65536 // Microsoft Truetype
&& hdr != 1330926671) // Adobe OTF ‘OTTO’
{
myFile.close();
alert (“Not a font type I can read…”);
exit(0);
}
numTable = getUshort (myFile);

/* Already read:
ul version
us numTable
Skip over
us searchRange
us entrySelector
us rangeShift
to get to start of tables:
*/
myFile.seek (12);

/* Find ‘maxp’ — maximum profile */
/* Each table entry is
ul tag
ul checksum
ul offset
ul length
*/
for (var t=0; t<numTable; t++)
{
tableEntry = myFile.read(16);
if (tableEntry.substr(0,4) == ‘maxp’) break;
}
if (tableEntry.substr(0,4) != ‘maxp’)
{
myFile.close();
alert (“No ‘maxp’ entry found–yuck”);
exit(0);
}

offset = (((((tableEntry.charCodeAt(8 ) << 8 ) +
tableEntry.charCodeAt(9)) << 8 ) +
tableEntry.charCodeAt(10)) << 8 ) +
tableEntry.charCodeAt(11);

myFile.seek (offset);

// Should be 0001.0000 but is sometimes different…
// Let’s ignore that, shall we.
version = getUlong (myFile);
NumberOfGlyphs = getUshort (myFile);
alert (“NumberOfGlyphs is “+NumberOfGlyphs);

myFile.close();

function getUshort (aFile)
{
var result = aFile.read(2);
return (result.charCodeAt(0)<<8 ) +
result.charCodeAt(1);
}

function getUlong (aFile)
{
var result = aFile.read(4);
return ((((result.charCodeAt(0)<<8 ) +
result.charCodeAt(1))<<8 ) +
result.charCodeAt(2)<<8 ) +
result.charCodeAt(3);
}

Yuki says:

Would you kindly explain where I can find “Font table” in Indesign CS5?
Thank you very much!

CabbageTree says:

Hello!
Thank you for such tip! The FontTable script works like a charm! Do you have any idea how would be possible to sort the result out a bit (excluding manual refining)?

Instead the CID/GID order begin with the classic alphabet:
abcdefgh…
ABCDEFGH…
and othe glyphs follow

Thank you.