Ghostscript: how do I find out what fonts are available?

Question

In Ghostscript, on a windows xp pc with an inkjet printer, how can I see a sample of the fonts available on my system? I need to know what they are called to invoke them, and it would be useful to know what substitutions are made.

Those 4 folks who voted to move the question to stackoverflow clearly had no clue about this question being PostScript related, or had no clue about PostScript's nature as a Turing-complete programming language.... :-( — Kurt Pfeifle, Jan 18 '12 at 18:41

score 9 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 18 '12 at 18:32

9

(*) {==} 256 string /Font resourceforall will pipe a list of all the fonts available to stdout.

Instead of a simple {==} for the proc argument to resourceforall you could supply a more complex routine to print a page of output using the font. Eg:

%!
(*) {cvn findfont 20 scalefont setfont
10 10 moveto (ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ) show showpage}
256 string /Font resourceforall

Or even:

%!
(*) {dup cvn findfont 20 scalefont setfont
10 100 moveto show 
10 10 moveto (ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ) show showpage}
256 string /Font resourceforall

You can make it as pretty as you like, or until you get bored.....

edited Jan 18 '12 at 18:32

Kurt Pfeifle

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answered Jan 17 '12 at 16:40

KenS

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how can one use this answer, by calling `gs`? – Ant6n Oct 10 '16 at 07:00
2

@Ant6n yes, just call `gs -c '(*) {==} 256 string /Font resourceforall'` or save the above codes into a ps file and run `gs file.ps` – kralyk Jan 08 '19 at 14:19
or `gs -q -dNODISPLAY -dBATCH -c '(*) {cvn ==} 256 string /Font resourceforall'` if you want the clean list of names to stdout – scruss Jul 09 '22 at 18:26

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 12 '12 at 21:32

3

It is there in the book I am using, to learn from and as a reference: "Postscript by Example" by Henry McGilpin and Mary Campione, Addison Wesley, 1992; ISBN 0-201-63228-4, Chapter 14 page 553, which has a dozen or so pages, 6 plus programs, on this very subject.

I got a download of the programs from the site and the file labelled "FONTS6.PS" is exactly what I want.

edited Feb 12 '12 at 21:32

Simon Sheehan

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answered Jan 18 '12 at 16:10

Harry Weston

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The site link is long gone, but the Internet Archive has a mirror with downloadable files: [Download PostScript Code Archives](https://web.archive.org/web/20150121062930/http://www.trilithon.com/pagesproducts/postscriptcode.html). The example (named `PostDisk/14_9to5/fonts6.ps` in the Unix archive) typesets the font names in two unsorted columns, perhaps too narrow for modern long font names – scruss Jul 09 '22 at 18:04

Ghostscript: how do I find out what fonts are available?

2 Answers2