FontForge Font View Modes Explained

FontForge’s Font View functions as the main dashboard for navigating, organizing, and inspecting every glyph in a font project. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the different view modes and display configurations available in FontForge's Font View window, covering outline and bitmap representations, compact encoding layouts, cell scaling options, and glyph identification labels to help you streamline your type design workflow.

Vector Outline Mode

Vector Outline Mode is the standard, default display mode in the Font View. In this mode, FontForge renders the vector contours of the foreground layer for each glyph inside its designated grid cell. This allows you to immediately check glyph silhouettes, overall proportion, alignment, and basic spacing across your entire character set without opening individual glyph editing windows.

Bitmap Strike View Modes

When working with fonts that contain embedded bitmap strikes (such as BDF or NFNT tables), FontForge can switch from rendering vector contours to rendering rasterized pixel data.

  • Bitmap Sizes: Through the View menu, you can select any generated pixel strike (such as 10px, 12px, or 24px) to inspect how the font renders at explicit low-resolution raster steps.
  • Anti-Aliased Bitmaps: If anti-aliased strikes are created, FontForge displays gray-scale pixel rendering rather than strict black-and-white 1-bit pixels.

Compact View Mode

By default, the Font View displays a complete matrix defined by the selected font encoding (such as Unicode, Latin-1, or Adobe Standard), leaving unoccupied slots blank.

Compact View mode condenses the display by hiding all unencoded and empty slots:

  • It groups only active, drawn glyphs consecutively in the grid.
  • It eliminates the need to scroll through vast ranges of empty Unicode blocks.
  • It can be toggled via View > Compact or by pressing the corresponding keyboard shortcut.

Cell Size and Scaling Modes

The Font View allows you to dynamically adjust the pixel scale of the grid cells to suit your display resolution or design task. Via the View menu, you can set the thumbnail rendering size:

  • Standard Preset Sizes: Switch between common pixel heights such as 24, 36, 48, 72, 96, and 128 pixels.
  • Overview vs. Inspection: Smaller cell sizes provide a high-level overview of the entire font to evaluate rhythm and contrast, while larger sizes make it easier to spot contour flaws and hinting behavior directly from the matrix.

Glyph Labeling Modes

FontForge allows you to change the metadata label printed alongside each glyph box in the matrix. Located under View > Glyph Labeling, these modes alter how each cell identifies its character:

  • Glyph Name: Displays the PostScript/OpenType string name (e.g., A, acute, adieresis).
  • Unicode Value (Hexadecimal): Shows the standard code point (e.g., U+0041).
  • Decimal Value: Displays the Unicode or encoding index as a base-10 number.
  • Encoding Index: Shows the glyph’s internal array index number within the file structure.

Layer-Specific Display Modes

FontForge supports multiple design layers, and the Font View can be toggled to show specific layer contents rather than only the standard foreground:

  • Foreground: Displays the primary exportable vector artwork.
  • Background: Displays background sketches, traces, or reference outlines stored within glyphs.
  • Layer Selection: In fonts utilizing custom multi-layer setups (such as Type 3 fonts or color OpenType fonts), you can configure which layer populates the Font View preview tiles.