FTGRID(1)

🎀 NAME 🎀

ftgrid — simple glyph grid viewer. Bestie, this is the manual page for ftgrid(1), and it’s literally here to show you glyphs. 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

ftgrid [options] [pt] font ...

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Okay so ftgrid displays individual font glyphs, magnified or reduced from a given size so they fit the window. The glyph outlines are always shown as they appear before rasterization. The bitmap and the pixel grid are displayed when magnification permits it. You can interactively change hinting and rendering options, which means you can visualize the applied distortions to the outlines. Obsessed, honestly. ✨

• pt — the point size for the given resolution. By default at 72dpi, this directly gives the ppem value (pixels per EM).
• font — the font file(s) to display. For Type 1 font files, ftgrid also tries to attach the corresponding metrics file (with extension .afm or .pfm).

This program is part of the FreeType demos package. 🫶

👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -d WxH[xD] — set the window width to W px, the height to H px, and optionally the depth to D bpp (default: 640x480x24). 🎀
• -r r — use resolution r dpi (default: 72dpi).
• -f index — specify first index to display (default: 0).
• -e enc — specify encoding tag (default: no encoding). Common values: unic (Unicode), symb (symbol), ADOB (Adobe standard), ADBC (Adobe custom), or a numeric charmap index. 🌈
• -m char — specify character to display.
• -a axis1,axis2,... — for Multiple Master, GX, or OpenType variation fonts, specify design coordinates for each axis at start-up. This option implies option -n. Ignored for all other font formats.
• -n — don’t display named instances of variation fonts.
• -k keys — emulate sequence of keystrokes upon start-up. If the keystrokes contain 'q', the program operates in batch mode. Function keys Fx are mapped to character codes 0xFx; as an example, -k $'\xF3q' is function key 'F3' followed by character 'q'.
• -v — show version.

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FreeType 2.15.0 • October 2026 — that’s the whole page, bestie, bye! 💖