Font Viewer is a utility that is able to preview fonts in many ways including sample text, comparison list, and large character map. Word processing and desktop publishing software giving font previews to make it easy to choose the font the users want. They commonly have pull-down list of fonts with each font name displayed. Though a lot of free font viewers are not actively developed, users may find an old one that is still useful. Even Windows' standard font utilities may be sufficient for some users. Many of the viewers are mainly character maps. These focus on the character set used by each font. This is the view that the users need when trying to decide what symbol to insert into a document, or when is the need to type a word in a foreign language full of unfamiliar characters with strange accents. Print sample font lists to have handy while working with graphics applications. In the past, viewers generally showed only the 256 ASCII or ANSI characters but the most useful viewers now show the extended Unicode character set.
FontForge is a free software that is used for font editing. It is formerly known as PfaEdit. It can run on Linux/Unix, Windows, VMS and Mac. It employs two scripting languages, its own and Python. It can run scripts from the command line, from its GUI, and may also serve as a Python module so it can integrate into a Python program. It supports Adobe OpenType feature file with its own syntax extension, the unofficial Microsoft MATH table for Cambria Math supported by XeTex, LuaTex and Office 2007. It uses FreeType for screen fonts and libpango and libcairo for text and graphics to support complex text layout and anti-aliased graphics. It uses AutoTrace or Potrace for tracing bitmap images to be imported into font. Some parts of its code are used by LuaTex for parsing and reading OpenType fonts. Its source code includes programs such as “showttf†that shows binary font file contents and WOFF deconverter and converter. FontForge supports a variety of fonts. Its native format is SFD [Spline Font Database] and collaborates with other designers to create difference files. Other formats supported by Fontforge are TTC [TrueType Collection], OTF [OpenType Font], TTF [TrueType Font], TeX Bitmap Fonts, PostScript Type 1, X11 OTB bitmap [SNFT only], BDF [Glyph Bitmap Distribution Font], WOFF [Web Open Face Font], FNT and FON for Windows, SVG [Scalable Vector Graphics].