Single Character tab

By default, Printer’s Apprentice displays a single character from the font selected in the Installed Fonts list. Using the Single Character view, you can scroll through the character set and see a detailed sample of each letter, number and symbol. Single Character view is a good way to closely look at dingbat characters.

In Single Character view there are two slider bars below the sample. The top slider moves through the characters in a typeface, the bottom slider changes the size of the sample text.

Character Set tab

This view displays the character set of the selected typeface in a large, easy to read chart. With this window, you can quickly find a needed symbol or dingbat.

Many fonts contain symbols, foreign character sets, dingbats or elaborate pictures. Some fonts contain complete Western alphabets, but have symbols or pictures rather than accented characters. The Character Set Tab makes it easy to use these special symbols in other Windows applications.

If a character displays as a square, this means the font designer did not include this character in the font. Many shareware fonts provide upper case characters, but not lower case. The lower case characters will sometimes display as a square.

Text tab

Clicking the Text tab shows you how fonts look when set with other text in a paragraph format.

To change the text, click inside the "Sample text" field at the bottom of the window and start typing. The text you type is saved to the Printer’s Apprentice configuration file and will be displayed the next time you run the software.

Keyboard tab

Do you ever want to know where a symbol or dingbat is located on the keyboard? Printer's Apprentice has a tab that displays the location of characters on a standard PC keyboard. This is especially useful when working with Wingdings and similar typefaces.

Press the "shift" or "Caps Lock" keys to toggle between upper and lower case characters.

Font Information tab

The Font Information tab displays any text data embedded inside a font file. Most commercial TrueType font files contain copyright and other legal information. Not all font authors choose to include information in this section. Files that have been run through font conversion utilities (such as Ares FontMonger) may also not contain information.

Some shareware fonts contain shareware distribution terms, license information or registration information. If you use shareware or trial use fonts, please comply with the terms of usage provided by the authors.

Font List tab

This tab shows you all the fonts that are in the current folder.

Compare Fonts tab

This tab lets you compare multiple fonts. Simply select fonts from the Install Fonts tab, Font Files tab or Font Groups tabs using the checkboxes. The selected fonts will appear on this page.