Version 1.0.0 of package Show-Font has just been released in GNU ELPA. You can now find it in M-x list-packages RET.
Show-Font describes itself as: ============================== Show font features in a buffer ============================== More at https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/show-font.html ## Summary: ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SHOW-FONT: PREVIEW FONTS Protesilaos Stavrou [email protected] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ This manual, written by Protesilaos Stavrou, describes the customization options for the Emacs package called `show-font' (or `show-font.el'), and provides every other piece of information pertinent to it. The documentation furnished herein corresponds to stable version 1.0.0, released on 2025-09-07. Any reference to a newer feature which does not yet form part of the latest tagged commit, is explicitly marked as such. Current development target is 1.1.0-dev. ## Recent NEWS: ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHANGE LOG OF SHOW-FONT Protesilaos Stavrou [email protected] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ This document contains the release notes for each tagged commit on the project’s main git repository: <https://github.com/protesilaos/show-font>. The newest release is at the top. For further details, please consult the manual: <https://protesilaos.com/emacs/show-font>. Table of Contents ───────────────── 1. Version 1.0.0 on 2025-09-07 1 Version 1.0.0 on 2025-09-07 ═════════════════════════════ This major update introduces support for fonts that cover more than the Latin script. It also expands the available functionality with quality-of-life refinements. 1.1 Support for Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Russian ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── The commands `show-font-tabulated' (alias `show-font-list') and `show-font-select-preview' can now generate a preview for fonts that are optimised to display the aforementioned languages. Each language provides its own user option to control the sample text it displays. The naming pattern `show-font-LANGUAGE-sample'. Of those, I only know Greek and thus wrote the value of `show-font-greek-sample', namely: `"Πρωτεσίλαος ο φιλόσοφος του οποίου τα έργα βρίθουν αστειισμών"'. For the others I used translation software to get the equivalent of `"Protesilaos does not read LANGUAGE"'. Please let me know if there are any mistakes in this regard. I was thinking of writing something a bit more funny, but was concerned the joke may not translate well. 1.2 Checking for language support among known families ────────────────────────────────────────────────────── While I have written functions that test if a given font can display a range of characters, this approach is computationally intensive if we need to check for many code points across multiple fonts. The alternative is to maintain lists of known font families that are meant to work with the given language. Those generally support Latin as well, but the idea is to let them shine in the language they are meant to be used for. For example, here is how we know that a font family is meant to display Arabic script: ┌──── │ (defconst show-font-arabic-families │ '("AlArabiya" "AlBattar" "AlHor" "AlManzomah" "AlYarmook" │ "Dimnah" "Hani" "Haramain" "Hor" "Kayrawan" "Khalid" "Mashq" │ "Nagham" "Noto Kufi Arabic" "Noto Naskh Arabic" "Noto Sans Arabic" │ "Rehan" "Sharjah" "Sindbad") │ "List of families that specialise in Arabic. │ Also see `show-font-greek-families' for the rationale of grouping font │ families in distinct variables.") └──── The list is not exhaustive and I am always eager to expand it. Just let me know. I learnt about these font families through trial and error by (i) installing them on my Debian system and (ii) searching online for common samples of them. Do `apt search -n fonts-' to check the relevant packages. 1.3 Support for music notation, mathematics, and other symbols ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── As with the natural languages, there are some fonts that specialise in displaying symbols. For example, MathJax has a bunch of fonts for showing those fancy formulas in the processed output of LaTeX documents. Again, there is a `defconst' for each of those types of font listing the known families. The concomitant user options are: • `show-font-mathematics-sample' • `show-font-music-sample' • `show-font-symbols-sample' 1.4 Problematic fonts are hidden from the list view ─────────────────────────────────────────────────── The `show-font-hidden-families' lists the fonts that are not known to cause problems. They do not render properly any of the supported samples and I am not sure even when they claim to support a certain set of characters (e.g. `show-font--displays-latin-p' returns non-`nil'). If you think there is a mistake here, please contact me. 1.5 Show a full preview from the list view ────────────────────────────────────────── … …
