Finding out what characters a given font supports

Question

How do I extract the list of supported Unicode characters from a TrueType or embedded OpenType font on Linux?

Is there a tool or a library I can use to process a .ttf or a .eot file and build a list of code points (like U+0123, U+1234, etc.) provided by the font?

Answer 1

Here is a method using the fontTools Python library (which you can install with something like pip install fonttools):

#!/usr/bin/env python from itertools import chain import sys  from fontTools.ttLib import TTFont from fontTools.unicode import Unicode  with TTFont(     sys.argv[1], 0, allowVID=0, ignoreDecompileErrors=True, fontNumber=-1 ) as ttf:     chars = chain.from_iterable(         [y + (Unicode[y[0]],) for y in x.cmap.items()] for x in ttf["cmap"].tables     )     if len(sys.argv) == 2:  # print all code points         for c in chars:             print(c)     elif len(sys.argv) >= 3:  # search code points / characters         code_points = {c[0] for c in chars}         for i in sys.argv[2:]:             code_point = int(i)   # search code point             #code_point = ord(i)  # search character             print(Unicode[code_point])             print(code_point in code_points) 

The script takes as arguments the font path and optionally code points / characters to search for:

$ python checkfont.py /usr/share/fonts/**/DejaVuSans.ttf (32, 'space', 'SPACE') (33, 'exclam', 'EXCLAMATION MARK') (34, 'quotedbl', 'QUOTATION MARK') …  $ python checkfont.py /usr/share/fonts/**/DejaVuSans.ttf 65 12622  # a ㅎ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A True HANGUL LETTER HIEUH False 

Answer 2

The X program xfd can do this. To see all characters for the "DejaVu Sans Mono" font, run:

xfd -fa "DejaVu Sans Mono" 

It's included in the x11-utils package on Debian/Ubuntu, xorg-x11-apps on Fedora/RHEL, and xorg-xfd on Arch Linux.