¶ Unicode Font Info is a really handy free application for OS X. Essentially it’s a font inspection tool with full support for Unicode 3.2, allowing you to easily navigate huge fonts with tens of thousands of supported glyphs.
The application performs two particularly useful functions: firstly it lets you see which glyphs (characters) are supported by any font installed on your machine. Secondly it enables you to find the decimal code for any given glyph, even going so far as to display the HTML entity. Glyphs are sorted by Unicode number, navigable in pages of 256 glyphs or by blocks such as Basic Latin-1, General Punctuation and Alphabetic Presentation Forms.
I also particularly like the outline display for each character, showing the baseline, x-height and kerning verticals (someone may correct me on the precise terminology there).
So if you want to code an unusual character into your HTML, such as a proper ligature like ‘fi’, you can use Unicode Font Info to find the entity (by checking a huge font such as Lucida Grande) and then see what other fonts support it; something I’m finding very useful for a little project I’m slowly piecing together.
Comments
1
Oooh, I like that. Unicode is my new second-favourite thing at the moment, after microformats.
Perhaps I need to broaden myself. But still.
2
Please check out decodeunicode.org. Its one of the best Unicode resources Ive ever seen. Its a web based database with images of every character…
Unfortunately Im not able to have a look on the app you mentioned because I dont have a Mac…
3
UnicodeChecker is another very useful tool. More limited in scope, but fast, accurate and it works from the Service menu.
Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to your little project.
4
Ooooh, I just had a look at webtypography.net. Neato! I like it.
It vaguely reminds me of Just Like a Whale by Steve Jones, where the author takes Darwin’s Origin Of Species as his basis, and re-writes it based on the advances in science in the intervening 140 years.
Typography, however, is much more important than evolution :)
5
Small Paul – oops that wasn’t supposed to be live just yet!
I’ve reinstated the holding page for now. I’ll being making a big announcement in a few weeks time once I’ve added some more content and ironed out a few glitches.
6
Ah! I was a little curioius at the lorem ipsum text for the latest entry.
Well, it looks great. I’m looking forward to reading it.
It also highlights just how frustrated we’re all going to be dealing with IE6 for however long it sticks around (at least a good 5 years or more yet, if 5 is anything to go by). First child and sibling selectors are really useful for doing good text layouts.
7
Create Smooth Fonts can convert your TrueType fonts so they will appear grayscaled on your screen.
http://www.yaodownload.com/desktop-enhancements/font-tools/createsmoothfonts/
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