Fontist

Fontist

How to use Fontist Ruby library?

In addition to the command-line interface Fontist can be used as a Ruby library.

Fontist::Font

The Fontist::Font is your go-to place to deal with any font using Fontist.

This interface allows you to find a font or install a font.

Finding a font

The Fontist::Font.find interface can be used a find a font in your system.

It will look into the operating system specific font directories, and also the fontist specific ~/.fontist directory.

Fontist::Font.find(name)

  • If Fontist finds a font, then it will return the paths.

  • Otherwise, it will either raise an unsupported font error, or trigger display of installation instructions for that specific font.

Install a font

The Fontist::Font.install interface can be used to install any supported font.

This interface first checks if you already have that font installed or not and if you do then it will return the paths.

If you don’t have a font but that font is supported by Fontist, then it will download the font and copy it to ~/.fontist directory and also return the paths.

Fontist::Font.install(name, confirmation: "no")

If there are issues detected with the provided font, such as the font is not supported, those errors would be raised.

List all fonts

The Fontist::Font interface exposes an interface to list all supported fonts.

This might be useful if want to know the name of the font or the available styles. You can do that by using:

Fontist::Font.all

The return values are OpenStruct objects, so you can easily do any other operation you would do in any ruby object.

Fontist::Formula

The fontist gem internally usages the Fontist::Formula interface to find a registered formula or fonts supported by any formula. Unless, you need to do anything with that you shouldn’t need to work with this interface directly. But if you do then these are the public interface it offers.

Find a formula

The Fontist::Formula.find interface allows you to find any of the registered formula. This interface takes a font name as an argument and it looks through each of the registered formula that offers this font installation. Usages:

Fontist::Formula.find("Calibri")

This method will search and return a Fontist formula for the provided keyword which allows for further processing, such as license checks or proceeding with installation of the font in your system.

List font styles supported by a formula

Normally, each font name can be associated with multiple styles or collection, for example the Calibri font might contains a regular, bold or italic styles fonts and if you want a interface that can return the complete list then this is your friend.

You can use it as following:

Fontist::Formula.find_fonts("Calibri")

List all formulas

The Fontist::Formula interface exposes an interface to list all registered font formula. This might be useful if want to know the name of the formula or what type fonts can be installed using that formula. Usages:

Fontist::Formula.all

The return values are OpenStruct objects, so you can easily do any other operation you would do in any ruby object.

Fontist::Manifest

Global options

Fontist can be switched to use the preferred family names. This format was used prior to v1.10.

Fontist.preferred_family = true

Fontist::Manifest::Locations

Fontist lets you find font locations from a defined manifest Hash in the following format:

{
  "Segoe UI"=>["Regular", "Bold"],
  "Roboto Mono"=>["Regular"]
}

Calling the following code returns a nested Hash with font paths and names. Font name is useful to choose a specific font in a font collection file (TTC).

Fontist::Manifest::Locations.from_hash(manifest)
{
  "Segoe UI"=> {
    "Regular"=>{
      "full_name"=>"Segoe UI",
      "paths"=>["/Users/user/.fontist/fonts/SEGOEUI.TTF"]
    },
    "Bold"=>{
      "full_name"=>"Segoe UI Bold",
      "paths"=>["/Users/user/.fontist/fonts/SEGOEUIB.TTF"]
    }
  },
  "Roboto Mono"=> {
    "Regular"=>{
      "full_name"=>nil,
      "paths"=>[]
    }
  }
}

Fontist::Manifest::Install

Fontist lets you not only to obtain font locations but also to install fonts from the manifest:

Fontist::Manifest::Install.from_hash(manifest, confirmation: "yes")

It will install fonts and return their locations:

{
  "Segoe UI"=> {
    "Regular"=>{
      "full_name"=>"Segoe UI",
      "paths"=>["/Users/user/.fontist/fonts/SEGOEUI.TTF"]},
    "Bold"=>{
      "full_name"=>"Segoe UI Bold",
      "paths"=>["/Users/user/.fontist/fonts/SEGOEUIB.TTF"]
    }
  },
  "Roboto Mono"=> {
    "Regular"=>{
      "full_name"=>"Roboto Mono Regular",
      "paths"=>["/Users/user/.fontist/fonts/RobotoMono-VariableFont_wght.ttf"]
    }
  }
}

Support of YAML format

Both commands support a YAML file as an input with a from_file method. For example, if there is a manifest.yml file containing:

---
Segoe UI:
- Regular
- Bold
Roboto Mono:
- Regular

Then the following calls would return font names and paths, as from the from_hash method (see Fontist::Manifest::Install and Fontist::Manifest::Locations).

Fontist::Manifest::Locations.from_file("manifest.yml")
Fontist::Manifest::Install.from_file("manifest.yml", confirmation: "yes")

Fontist::Fontconfig

Fontist supports work with Fontconfig via the Ruby interface:

Fontist::Fontconfig.update              # let detect fontist fonts
Fontist::Fontconfig.remove              # disable detection
Fontist::Fontconfig.remove(force: true) # do not fail if no config exists