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Short URL: https://scripts.sil.org/ViewGlyphWalkthru

SIL ViewGlyph: Introductory walkthrough notes

Bob Hallissy, 2003-03-03

These are notes for showing how to use the SIL ViewGlyph utility. The SIL ViewGlyph utility is a font browser — it lets you see what is in a font.

Contents

Installation of ViewGlyph
Prerequisites:
Font Selection
View Selection
Chart Window
Sample Text Window
Font Statistics Window
Cmap window
Names Window
Final notes and caveats
Uninstalling ViewGlyph

Installation of ViewGlyph

Download ViewGlyph.
Unzip the file you downloaded.
Double-click on Setup.exe to run the installation program. This will install ViewGlyph to C:Program FilesSIL ViewGlyph.

Prerequisites:

Times New Roman and Wingdings
Optionally: Encore Font System installed

Font Selection

Top line is font selection
- Name, Script, Size, Bold & Italic
  - Select Times New Roman
  - Notice available scripts - compare with WordPad’s font list and Format Font dialog
    - This information is identified in the font
    - Try a different font, e.g., MS Serif and note script selections change
    - Try a symbol font, e.g., WingDings or SILDoulos IPA93
      - This is one way to determine font encoding (i.e., Symbol or UGL)
  - Size, Bold & Italic are obvious

View Selection

View and Codepage determine the “view” of the font:
- Go back to Times New Roman
  - {key:Alt-N}, type “time”, press down-arrow
    
    Try available views, note the chart changing:
    - Glyph IDs
    - Windows character set
    - Windows Unicode
    - Apple Unicode
    - Macintosh Roman

View:	First Char of chart	Last Char of chart
Glyph IDs
Windows Char set
Windows Unicode
Macintosh Roman

Fill out this chart (show how to drift over chart).

Explain Glyph IDs, why they might want to know
Try a symbol font, e.g., WingDings, and look at available views
- Not Windows Unicode, but Windows Symbol
  - This is another way to discover whether a font is symbol-encoded

View:	First Char of chart	Last Char of chart
Windows Symbol

Fill out this chart for WingDings.

Typical Windows TrueType fonts will have at least Glyph IDs, Windows Character set, and either Windows Unicode or Windows Symbol; other entries are based on the font’s ‘cmap’ table.
- E.g., SIL DoulosL (one of the “Library” fonts from SIL Encore Font system)
- Also demonstrates
  - File / Open
  - Fonts don’t have to be installed
  - In fact, you can drag font files onto ViewGlyph, or provide font file as command line parameter
    - Permits “associating” with font files.

View:	First Char of chart	Last Char of chart
Encore SILID

Fill out this chart for SILDoulosL or some other font from LIBFONT directory.

Which “Windows Character set?”
- Select to view by Windows Character set
- For now, make sure CodePage is “(determined by font)”
- Expand window and adjust font size so you can see characters 32 - 255.
- Select different scripts.
  - Here we are asking the system for a specific character set when we select the font. This is how WordPad and many other multi-lingual codepage-based apps work: A character set parameter is supplied along with the font name. Conversion to Unicode is implicit when the 8-bit text drawing API is used.
- Select different codepages
  - NB: List represents codepages installed in your system
  - Here ViewGlyph is explicitly converting the 8-bit data to Unicode via the codepage you selected, and then drawing the letters with a Unicode text drawing API.
  - In this case, the script selection is ignored.
- Why does ViewGlyph confuse me with two ways to select character set?
  - Because Windows provides two different mechanisms, and some apps use one way and some apps use another
  - Some fonts exhibit different behavior, particularly with 128 (x80), 142 (x8E), 158 (x9E), and 183 (xB7) (particularly with pre-WindowsXP).

Chart Window

API selection
- Options / Chart Window API /
  - Simple TextOut
  - Extended TextOut
  - Extended TextOut (language processing disabled)
- Particularly important on Windows 2000/XP:
  - See various non-Roman areas, e.g., Hebrew & Arabic
Status bar
- Drift over characters in the chart
- Try available views, note what is in status bar:
  - Glyph IDs
  - Windows character set
  - Windows Unicode
    - NOTE: Values are not contiguous.
  - Apple Unicode
  - Macintosh Roman
- Demo SILDoulosL - no “Unicode value”
Click
- Copies the character to the Sample Text Window
Right-click
- ViewGlyph can be used as a “CharMap” program

Sample Text Window

Codes in the input window:
- separated by spaces
- can be entered as:
  - Single-character “ANSI”
    - Except for space
  - Decimal
  - Hex
- Most important: Are interpreted according to the View, i.e., Glyph IDs, Windows character, Unicode Character, etc.
API Selection
- Options / Sample Window API

Font Statistics Window

Options / View Statistics
Indicates information about the font Windows actually chose for you
Particularly useful are:
- Font Name and otm* names
  - Useful if you ask for a font that isn’t installed, e.g.,
    - “Times”, “Century Schoolbook”
- Number of glyphs
- Charset and CodePage
  - Note how these track the “script”
- Miscellaneous other information:
  - tm* data comes from TextMetric APIs
  - otm* data comes from OutlineTextMetric APIs

Cmap window

Options / View Cmap
Select whether to include “unencoded” glyphs
- Explain what this means
Select which cmap by “Platform ID”
Caution: pan-Unicode fonts can take a while to fill (and clear!) the listbox
Supports sorting, multi-select and copy to clipboard

Names Window

Options / View Names
Caveat: can display only CP1252 data - all else shows as “?”
Tooltip can be used to see longer names
Supports sorting, multi-select and copy to clipboard

Final notes and caveats

You can print the current chart view
- File / Print
When you install and uninstall fonts, ViewGlyph’s font list normally updates automatically. If it doesn’t click Options / Refresh font list or press F5
Remember that Sample Text is interpreted according to the selected view - more than one person has been fooled by this.
On Windows 2000/XP, font linking and fallback can still fool ViewGlyph
ViewGlyph can view fonts that aren’t installed:
- Various techniques:
  - File / Open
  - File / "recently used list"
  - Drag & drop
  - Command line
  - Explorer file association:
    - Tools / Folder Options / File Types / TTF at this point details are different for different versions of Windows
- Temporarily uninstalls same-named font

Uninstalling ViewGlyph

Click on Start / Settings / Control Panel / Add or Remove Programs to remove SIL ViewGlyph.

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