Req: Font Awesome support

[wmjordan]

Nowadays more and more people are using that font (http://fontawesome.io/).
However, its glyphs are placed in the private use block which could not be accessed in normal ways.
Is there a way to input Font Awesome glyphs into PL's text layer?

[Gerhard Huber]

yes copy them from Windows Character Map.

[photoken]

And, to make things easy, you can define the Character Map application as an external editor in PL. Just set its file format as "None".

[wmjordan]

Finally I found the Character Map, which was not in the Start Menu on my Windows 10.
The glyphs in the program was too small and hard to find.
I wonder whether there is a more efficient way to find out the one I need out of those hundreds of glyphs.


Or, it may not be the feature that shall be included in PL... Perhaps I have got to look for some other font viewer tools for such type of tasks.

[Herbert123]

I agree, the Windows Character Map is a sorry excuse for a font utility. It is terrible compared to the standard Mac Character panel - to the point of being useless. Completely useless with fontawesome and other symbol/icon fonts. And ugly looking to boot. This is not meant for daily use, nor meant to be used by designers/typophiles. Copying and pasting characters is slow and cumbersome.

As I see it, a character utility should offer these features (at the very least):
- scalable window
- font size easily adjustable
- logical and easy to understand character block labels
- custom glyph favourites sets controlled by the user
- simple and quick font selection
- direct character insertion. No silly copying and pasting.
- option to keep the window floating over all other windows, even if another window is active.

A couple of alternatives I am aware of:

UnicodeFontViewer http://www.soft-gems.net/index.php/tool ... ont-viewer
Somewhat of an improvement. At least fonts can be quickly selected in a list view pane on the left (scroll wheel works too!), and the font size is freely adjustable. And the character block selection labels are actually usable and understandable. No installation required, one EXE file only.
Major caveat is that this font utility is old, and has never been updated - which means it only supports TTF font files. OTF is unsupported.
This means UnicodeFontViewer is only of limited use. Free!
Copying and pasting characters is slow and cumbersome again, but slightly more convenient compared to Character Map.

BabelMap http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Software/BabelMap.html
A font utility for... Not sure. Programmers? The GUI and usability is worse than Windows Character Map, and that is saying something. Great for font developers, I suppose. One simple EXE file, which is nice. Supports bookmarks (which is understandable in regards to the GUI catastrophe). At least the font size can be adjusted in two steps - but, similar to Windows Character Map, not meant to be used by designers.
Copying and pasting characters is slow and cumbersome.

PopChar http://www.ergonis.com/products/popcharwin/index.html
Now we are talking. Ticks all the required boxes I listed, and much more: characters with similar shapes can be searched for, and the user is even allowed to draw a shape in the search box. Windows can be kept on top, and insertion of character is direct: NO copying and pasting!!!
Fonts may be added to favourites, and a hotkey pulls it up - no need to clutter PhotoLine's external plugin menu. It's fast, and efficient. The labeling is straightforward. And quick scrolling and searching - the drawing search function works really with a Wacom. The built-in font preview is great for quick font evaluation.
Only caveat: not free, it's commercial - 30 euros. I got a discount because of my teaching job It's worth the money, though, if you work a lot with text.

A couple of other alternatives exist (http://alternativeto.net/software/character-map/), but PopChar is in a class of its own.

[Herbert123]

By the way, to manage your font collections I recommend either NexusFont or the newer FontBase.

http://www.xiles.net/
http://fontba.se/

I work with hundreds of fonts, and having too many fonts installed (active) does slow down applications such as PhotoLine (when starting up).

PS NexusFont also offers a built-in character map - right-mouse click on a font, and open the Character Map. Not as direct, though.

[bkh]

Does Windows have something like Unicode Hex Input (on OS X) where you can directly type the unicode for the character? Might be quicker than a character map if you know what you need. (Unfortunately, Unicode Hex Input does not work perfectly with PL on OS X, either, because it also types the first three digits of the hex number, followed by the desired unicode character.)

Cheers

Burkhard.

[Herbert123]

Does Windows have something like Unicode Hex Input (on OS X) where you can directly type the unicode for the character? Might be quicker than a character map if you know what you need. (Unfortunately, Unicode Hex Input does not work perfectly with PL on OS X, either, because it also types the first three digits of the hex number, followed by the desired unicode character.)

Cheers

Burkhard.

All of the above listed utilities provide that option, even Windows Character Map. The issue with Character Map is that the user must first enter the exact value, and then hit <enter>. In PopChar the results are displayed while the user types, and partial values often produce what you need.

[wmjordan]

Does Windows have something like Unicode Hex Input (on OS X) where you can directly type the unicode for the character? Might be quicker than a character map if you know what you need. (Unfortunately, Unicode Hex Input does not work perfectly with PL on OS X, either, because it also types the first three digits of the hex number, followed by the desired unicode character.)

Cheers

Burkhard.

All of the above listed utilities provide that option, even Windows Character Map. The issue with Character Map is that the user must first enter the exact value, and then hit <enter>. In PopChar the results are displayed while the user types, and partial values often produce what you need.

Thank you very much for the information provided.
Currently I have an idea. Font Awesome has a CSS file accompanied, which defined class names and the corresponding code point in the font. If we could parse the CSS file and create a mapper between the name and the glyph, it is also possible to input the glyph via the CSS names. Just like how it operates on their web site.

[bkh]

Currently I have an idea. Font Awesome has a CSS file accompanied, which defined class names and the corresponding code point in the font. If we could parse the CSS file and create a mapper between the name and the glyph, it is also possible to input the glyph via the CSS names. Just like how it operates on their web site.

Yes, all that's needed is a trivial program to convert it to PL's (really simple) TextShortcuts.txt format and insert the shortcuts there. (The TextShortcuts.txt file is part of PL's preferences.) Of course, it's also possible to define the required text shortcuts from within PL.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[wmjordan]

Currently I have an idea. Font Awesome has a CSS file accompanied, which defined class names and the corresponding code point in the font. If we could parse the CSS file and create a mapper between the name and the glyph, it is also possible to input the glyph via the CSS names. Just like how it operates on their web site.

Yes, all that's needed is a trivial program to convert it to PL's (really simple) TextShortcuts.txt format and insert the shortcuts there. (The TextShortcuts.txt file is part of PL's preferences.) Of course, it's also possible to define the required text shortcuts from within PL.

Cheers

Burkhard.

I am afraid it might not be efficient to utilize the TextShortcuts.txt.
PL does not have IntelliSense like Visual Studio. If we forget a names of the glyph and remember only part of it, no drop down list with candidates will appear. This workaround still challenges human memory.
And if we install more than one symbolic fonts--some designers might have many such kinds of fonts, there would be thousands of shortcuts to remember, which might be impossible for ordinary people.

If PL could create a new plugin architecture, which starts an external EXE file and read back the stdout from that EXE file, it could be possible for someone to develop a program to list a series of symbolic glyphs and insert them to PL's text layers by writing to the stdout.

[Herbert123]

It is at this point that I miss a scripting engine with GUI support in PhotoLine - its Achilles heel, so to speak. A scripting interface would open up SO many possibilities.