font manager

A C++ module for Node.js providing access to the system font catalog.

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font-manager

A C++ module for Node.js providing access to the system font catalog.

Features

  • List all available fonts
  • Find fonts with specified characteristics
  • Font substitution when characters are missing

Platforms

Installation

Installation of the font-manager module is via npm:

npm install font-manager

On Linux, you also may need to install the libfontconfig-dev package, for example:

sudo apt-get install libfontconfig-dev

API

You load the font-manager module using require as with all Node modules:

var fontManager = require('font-manager');

All of the methods exported by font-manager have both synchronous and asynchronous versions available.
You should generally prefer the asynchronous version as it will allow your program to continue doing other
processing while a request for fonts is processing in the background, which may be expensive depending on
the platform APIs that are available.

getAvailableFonts()

Returns an array of all font descriptors available on the system.

// asynchronous API
fontManager.getAvailableFonts(function(fonts) { ... });

// synchronous API
var fonts = fontManager.getAvailableFontsSync();

// output
[ { path: '/Library/Fonts/Arial.ttf',
    postscriptName: 'ArialMT',
    family: 'Arial',
    style: 'Regular',
    weight: 400,
    width: 5,
    italic: false,
    monospace: false },
  ... ]

findFonts(fontDescriptor)

Returns an array of font descriptors matching a query
font descriptor.
The returned array may be empty if no fonts match the font descriptor.

// asynchronous API
fontManager.findFonts({ family: 'Arial' }, function(fonts) { ... });

// synchronous API
var fonts = fontManager.findFontsSync({ family: 'Arial' });

// output
[ { path: '/Library/Fonts/Arial.ttf',
    postscriptName: 'ArialMT',
    family: 'Arial',
    style: 'Regular',
    weight: 400,
    width: 5,
    italic: false,
    monospace: false },
  { path: '/Library/Fonts/Arial Bold.ttf',
    postscriptName: 'Arial-BoldMT',
    family: 'Arial',
    style: 'Bold',
    weight: 700,
    width: 5,
    italic: false,
    monospace: false } ]

findFont(fontDescriptor)

Returns a single font descriptors matching a query
font descriptors as well as possible. This method
always returns a result (never null), so sometimes the output will not
exactly match the input font descriptor if not all input parameters
could be met.

// asynchronous API
fontManager.findFont({ family: 'Arial', weight: 700 }, function(font) { ... });

// synchronous API
var font = fontManager.findFontSync({ family: 'Arial', weight: 700 });

// output
{ path: '/Library/Fonts/Arial Bold.ttf',
  postscriptName: 'Arial-BoldMT',
  family: 'Arial',
  style: 'Bold',
  weight: 700,
  width: 5,
  italic: false,
  monospace: false }

substituteFont(postscriptName, text)

Substitutes the font with the given postscriptName with another font
that contains the characters in text. If a font matching postscriptName
is not found, a font containing the given characters is still returned. If
a font matching postscriptName is found, its characteristics (bold, italic, etc.)
are used to find a suitable replacement. If the font already contains the characters
in text, it is not replaced and the font descriptor for the original font is returned.

// asynchronous API
fontManager.substituteFont('TimesNewRomanPSMT', '汉字', function(font) { ... });

// synchronous API
var font = fontManager.substituteFontSync('TimesNewRomanPSMT', '汉字');

// output
{ path: '/Library/Fonts/Songti.ttc',
  postscriptName: 'STSongti-SC-Regular',
  family: 'Songti SC',
  style: 'Regular',
  weight: 400,
  width: 5,
  italic: false,
  monospace: false }

Font Descriptor

Font descriptors are normal JavaScript objects that describe characteristics of
a font. They are passed to the findFonts and findFont methods and returned by
all of the methods. Any combination of the fields documented below can be used to
find fonts, but all methods return full font descriptors.

Name Type Description
path string The path to the font file in the filesystem. (not applicable for queries, only for results)
postscriptName string The PostScript name of the font (e.g 'Arial-BoldMT'). This uniquely identities a font in most cases.
family string The font family name (e.g 'Arial')
style string The font style name (e.g. 'Bold')
weight number The font weight (e.g. 400 for normal weight). Should be a multiple of 100, between 100 and 900. See below for weight documentation.
width number The font width (e.g. 5 for normal width). Should be an integer between 1 and 9. See below for width documentation.
italic boolean Whether the font is italic or not.
monospace boolean Whether the font is monospace or not.

Weights

Value Name
100 Thin
200 Ultra Light
300 Light
400 Normal
500 Medium
600 Semi Bold
700 Bold
800 Ultra Bold
900 Heavy

Widths

Value Name
1 Ultra Condensed
2 Extra Condensed
3 Condensed
4 Semi Condensed
5 Normal
6 Semi Expanded
7 Expanded
8 Extra Expanded
9 Ultra Expanded

License

MIT