The Fonts pane displays fonts from whatever you have selected in the collections pane on the left side of the main window.
You can have the Fonts pane display just fontPreviews, or Previews at the top of the pane and a columnarFont List at the bottom.
Previews only
If theFont List is showing, click Hide Font List(or choose View > Hide Font List) to show just thePreviews.
The Previews list shows a preview for every font in the selected collection.
If you enable family groups (choose View > Group Fonts by Family), the Previews list collapses families to a single row with basic information about the family; click the exposure triangle at the left end of a row to display the previews for all members of the family.
If you sort the list by anything other than Name then the list will be divided into categories representing the sort selection. Each category is separated by a gray bar that shows the sort criterion. For example, if you sort by Type, the list will be separated into categories like OpenType - PS, OpenType - TT, PostScript, and TrueType. (The categories displayed will depend on the nature of the fonts in the selected collection.)
If you sort by PostScript Name, you might be surprised to see a much longer list; since every font face has a unique PostScript name, every single face will have a category in the list, and each category will have one family entry.
Preview types
There are four preview types available in the main window. Select a preview from the View > Preview menu or click an icon at the bottom of the Previews list.
Tile
This view shows a tile for each font. Each tile displays a two-character sample of the font and lists the font’s name and its styles. There are also controls for showing the font info , setting the font as a favorite
, and activating the font
.
QuickType
QuickType displays a sentence in each font, along with the font name, info, favorite, and activation controls. You can select a sentence to display from the drop-down menu at the bottom of the window, or type your own text. You can change the text size using the slider, menu, or by entering a value.
Waterfall
This view displays the preview sentence in four different sizes. You can select a different sentence or enter your own text.
ABC123
This view displays the upper- and lowercase English letters, digits, and some standard symbols. You can change the text size using the controls at the bottom of the window.
Other ways to preview
The Info pane includes a Preview tab. This tab shows the sample text at 60 points. You can edit the text in this window. (This will change the sample text used for the QuickType and Waterfall previews.)
The Info pane also includes the Glyphs tab. This tab shows all the glyphs in the font. You can also view any available Unicode subset of the font.
Previews + Font List
If theFont List is hidden, click Show Font List (or chooseView > Show Font List) to show both the Previews and a columnar list of fonts.
ThePreviews + Font List view behaves a bit differently than the Previews view:
-
Family groups are only applied to theFont List;
-
The Previews pane at the top only displays previews for what is selected in theFont List.
To sort the Font List, click the column head of the criterion you want to sort by; click the column head again to reverse the sort order.
You can re-order columns in theFont List; click and drag a column head to move that column left or right in the list. (You can’t change the first three columns:Activation,Favorite, andName.)
On Windows, you can also hide columns in the list: right-click a column head and choose columns to show or hide from the shortcut menu.