How can I dump every character in a font to a text file?

November 11, 2009 11:25 AM

How can I dump every character in a font to a text file?

I am trying to generate a text file that contains every character in a specific font. I also need the characters to be broken up into small groups so that they are approximately subtitle-length. Thus, when I'm finished, I'll have a text file of several (to several hundred) subtitles, comprising every possible character in the font.

I'm trying to do it through Character Map, but I have to individually click each character, then click select, then when I get enough characters for a line, I click copy, then paste it into my document, then back to the character map, delete the text out of the select field, start again. This isn't completely terrible, but my problem is that I'm trying to do it for Asian fonts, which can have several thousand characters each.

Ideally I would like to be able to get one copy of each character in the entire font in one text document. Then I could do the line length editing myself, because I would be saving so much time on the copying and pasting.

Any utilities, free or paid, that anyone knows of that can automate this process for me?

posted by Beautiful Downtown Burbank to computers & internet (4 comments total)

I believe you can do this with Karen's Font Explorer:
http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptfonts.asp
posted by Rad_Boy at 11:47 AM on November 11

many font management programs, linotype's font explorer x being a good example (free version at bottom of page), can do something close to what you want: they can display all characters in a font at once. that way you would end up with an image of what all your characters look like but not a text file.

if that isn't close enough, I'd really encourage you to ask at the typophile forum. it's free and if there are people out there who have pondered this question you'd most likely find them there.
posted by krautland at 2:47 PM on November 11

Thanks Krautland! No one had anything right off the bat for me, but sure enough after a day or so of discussion, someone had written me a program to do exactly what I needed! They were fantastically helpful and I appreciate the suggestion very much.
posted by Beautiful Downtown Burbank at 6:17 PM on November 12

they *wrote* a program! wow!
posted by krautland at 10:40 PM on November 14