this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
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A modern and simple font (pre)viewing application seems to be an impossible thing … (lemmy.ml)
submitted 6 days ago by Dirk@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml
29 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

So, yeah, basically the title …

I am in search for a good and simple and modern font viewing application. But there seems to be nothing that matches my criteria.

  • The software needs to be independent from any desktop environment, because I don’;t use one and i am not willing to install what feels like hundreds of specific dependencies

  • The software also should not be a font manager, I can manage my fonts absolutely fine by my own.

  • The software also does not need any features to view “installed and uninstalled” fonts (a term I come across – whatever that means), just give it a file name as parameter and view that font in the GUI.

  • The software should not be dead (i.e. last upstream change over a decade ago, using a dead graphics toolkit, not working on Wayland, etc.).

But either I forgot how to search the web or there seems to be no such application. All I wound was either decades old, dead software, or overly complicated and complex font managers or modules for the two common desktop environments.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance :)

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[–] siha@feddit.uk 21 points 6 days ago

Not sure if it counts, but gnome-font-viewer might fit the bill.

You can probably run something like gnome-font-viewer /usr/share/fonts/open-sans/OpenSans-Regular.ttf and it should show you the font, although I haven't verified that myself.

Here are it's dependencies:

$ dnf repoquery --requires gnome-font-viewer
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
libadwaita-1.so.0()(64bit)
libadwaita-1.so.0(LIBADWAITA_1_0)(64bit)
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.38)(64bit)
libcairo.so.2()(64bit)
libfontconfig.so.1()(64bit)
libfreetype.so.6()(64bit)
libfribidi.so.0()(64bit)
libgcc_s.so.1()(64bit)
libgcc_s.so.1(GCC_3.0)(64bit)
libgcc_s.so.1(GCC_3.3.1)(64bit)
libgio-2.0.so.0()(64bit)
libglib-2.0.so.0()(64bit)
libgobject-2.0.so.0()(64bit)
libgraphene-1.0.so.0()(64bit)
libgtk-4.so.1()(64bit)
libharfbuzz.so.0()(64bit)
libm.so.6()(64bit)
libm.so.6(GLIBC_2.2.5)(64bit)
libpango-1.0.so.0()(64bit)
libpangocairo-1.0.so.0()(64bit)
rtld(GNU_HASH)

It does also let you view fonts installed on your system, but I don't see why that should be a deal-breaker.

There is also the display command, provided by ImageMagick. My understanding is that it only supports X11, but it should work just fine under XWayland.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 20 points 6 days ago (2 children)

These types of apps became fairly irrelevant with the advent of Web Fonts and sites that already do all of this.

There's Fontbase, Gnome's Font Manager, KDE's Font Viewer and FontForge that are still maintained.

The fact that you're asking for whatever tool to not use something like QT or GTK is asking for the moon here. These types of applications you describe are generally packaged with a DE for this very use. I don't think there's a real use-case for someone to develop this independent of any DE, honestly. That's what they're most useful for.

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

These types of apps became fairly irrelevant with the advent of Web Fonts and sites that already do all of this.

That’s my point. All of those stupid modern things do not solve my issue of just double-clicking a local ttf file in my file manager to see some text rendered in that font. That is literally all I want to do.

The fact that you’re asking for whatever tool to not use something like QT or GTK

I don’t really care what graphics toolkit is used. I just don’t want something that is heavily interconnected with any type of desktop environment due to not wanting to install a metric shit-ton of dependencies 😉

[–] Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago

doesn't care if it uses it or gtk

Doesn't want to install "a shit ton of dependencies"

You appear to have a case of terminal unreasonable standards for what qualities as a "shit ton"

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

those stupid modern things

As far as I know, GNOME and KDE have had font viewers since time immemorial.

If the requirement is "few dependencies that I don't already have" then we need to know something about what dependencies you already have and what constitutes too many. As far as I can see, gnome-font-viewer's one GNOME-specific dependency is libadwaita.

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

As far as I know, GNOME and KDE have had font viewers since time immemorial.

I was talking specifically about web fonts and web font websites which help me not the slightest with my use case.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Oh, ok.

So, what dependencies do the DE font viewers actually pull in? How much space does that take up? What are the limits?

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

So, what dependencies do the DE font viewers actually pull in?

The ones specific to that DE, which I do not want.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 1 points 5 days ago

So, given you won't give any more detail on your requirements, I take it you just don't like 'em.

If you just don't like stuff for no objective reason then there's no reason for anyone else to build something satisfying your caprices. No-one can really help you because you're not letting anyone inside your head.

I'm sure you can knock something together in your GUI toolkit of choice that satisfies your whims. Zenity makes it easy to write styled text in a dialog box; maybe start there.

[–] mech@feddit.org 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I see you are an experienced Linux user.
Complaining that something doesn't exist on Linux, instead of asking for advice in the title -
Triggers people who want to help and people who want to correct you.

[–] UnRelatedBurner@sh.itjust.works 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

turns out stackoverflow isn't dead

[–] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

"You've always had the power, my dear. You've had it all along"

[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It isn't a dedicated font viewer, but I've used ImageMagick's display utility to preview fonts.

[–] cerement@slrpnk.net 9 points 6 days ago

ImageMagick really is a Swiss Army Knife of usefulness …

[–] PushButton@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago

Super modern bash script.

fontviewer.sh > /tmp/viewfont.html && xdg-open /tmp/viewfont.html

Pastebin script in here

[–] flx@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Have you looked at the Arch Wiki already?

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago

I did, and I just don’t “feel it”. Those is all great software but none of them really fits my specific use case. They all seem to be deeply connected with desktop environments or being just plain old font managers.

My dream is something like an image viewer, but for fonts. A bit like display from ImageMagick does it, but more like this.

[–] hades@feddit.uk 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

What features do you need? Just render a string with a given font and that’s it? Or something more advanced?

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Ideally something that allows me to see the characters in a table, sorted by character blocks, like in the LibreOffice “Insert Special Characters” dialog, so that I’m not limited to some predefined text but being able to see all characters.

[–] olenkoVD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

KCharSelect maybe?

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 days ago (2 children)

KCharSelect

It just installs kcharselect … and figuratively half of KDE :)

There seems to be a Flatpak available I’ll check out later when I have time to install hundreds of megabyte of depending other KDE-specific Flatpaks …

[–] excel@lemming.megumin.org 4 points 6 days ago

Sounds like you already know the real solution: use KDE

[–] nyan@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The TDE version of kcharselect should do much the same stuff with fewer deps, if a suitable package exists for your distro.

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 days ago

Mmmh, nope, only the normal version available.

The Flatpak version (or KCharSelect in general) unfortunately ignores the font file given on command line.

[–] blackbrook@mander.xyz 2 points 6 days ago

It's not you, the web has forgotten how to be searched.