Font Inspector
Font Inspector is an experimental tool for dissecting and examining the structure of font files on the web. The fonts we use every day are more than collections of letters. Like PDF files, they are carefully assembled structures of data, containing precise information about every glyph, or character shape. A font contains hundreds or thousands of glyphs, dozens of OpenType features, and a wealth of metadata. Though we do not see it, technology, language, design, and history are interwoven within letters.
Font Inspector grew out of an exploration of how far font data could be controlled and visualized in a browser before work began in earnest on redesigning the AG Typography Institute website and developing the AG Font Cloud application. It was also an attempt to understand and visually represent the structure of a font file using only basic web technologies: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. In short, it is a small, earnest answer to the question, “Can we dissect a font on the web?”
With Font Inspector, you can upload a font file stored on your computer and examine its metadata—name, creator, version, license information—and every glyph it contains. This gives an intuitive view of the character range the font supports. You can also test OpenType features such as ligatures, alternates, and positioning, as well as variable-font features, using sample text. All of this happens in real time in the browser: a rare opportunity to manipulate and experiment directly with the complex data that is a font. Unfortunately, like Multilingual Typography Assistant, it runs only on laptops and desktops, because access to font files is limited on mobile devices. That is all.
Font Inspector is an experiment in using web technology to understand fonts more transparently and handle them directly. It is also a small step embodying AG Lab’s development philosophy: “Small, simple, unexpected, and ceaseless!” Many typography tools are heavy, complicated, and closed. Font Inspector, however, is small, quietly open, and made in a form anyone can access.
A font is also an operating system in itself. It is a module for expressing language visually, complete only when it can handle an entire language system rather than a single letter. Through Font Inspector, I sensed the possibility of making typography a little more open and tangible. Together with other tools to be introduced “small, simple, unexpected, and ceaselessly,” perhaps Font Inspector is a preview of that small evolution.
