Embird Glyph Identikit

Glyph Identikit allows the user to find the right font among thousands in a minute. It works like a searching engine and uses attributes (features) of font or particular letters instead of keywords. Glyph Identikit 3.0 recognizes 5300+ Corel Draw, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Word and other TrueType fonts. Glyph Identikit also installs fonts and prints list of found font. With Glyph Identikit you can print a booklet of all your TrueType fonts.

Glyph Identikit does not include any font itself. Glyph Identikit contains sample of fonts and shows sources of each font to help user to find the font. If the supported fonts are missing from the user's system, the program will show a built-in preview. Users can then typically locate and download the font online with one click.

Clicking the font sample invokes Glyph Identikit searching for this font on Internet, where many fonts, or similar alternatives are available free of charge for instant use. This makes Glyph Identikit powerful identification tool with virtually unlimited number of font matches.

Searching with Glyph Identikit is different for common simple fonts and special ornamental fonts. Common fonts are described with attributes and user may search among them by choosing several most distinctive attributes (like flat top of A or concurrent side bars of M ). Special fonts like Middle Age or Western fonts are classified in separate categories.

1. Scanning Drives for Fonts

Glyph Identikit will scan chosen drives on your computer for all TrueType fonts (even if they are not installed) automatically after its first run. It is very useful to choose optimization option from the scanning menu. Optimization of database might take several minutes, but Glyph Identikit will work much faster.

Note: You need to copy all your fonts on the hard disk (into any folder) in order to use Glyph Identikit efficiently. Otherwise, Glyph Identikit will use only alternative samples instead of missing fonts. Run the scanning process manually every time you add new fonts to your hard disk. Command is accessible through the main menu: go to Font and then to Scan Drives For Fonts.

2. Use of Glyph Identikit

Warning: If you need to identify an unknown font from some artwork and you try to find identical font with Glyph Identikit, keep in mind that font on the artwork may be stretched, skewed, outlined or otherwise modified with respect to original font.

Searching is different for common and special fonts:

Common Fonts - Attributes Mode

Common fonts are simple fonts which may have serif and may be bold, hollow or italic. Simple fonts with shadow or highlight are classified among special fonts. Select Attributes from the top part of screen. Four searching methods are available in this mode:

Method 1. Include

Set several most significant attributes from Include panel to right states by repeated clicking on them (3-5 choosen attributes are enough usually). Then hit Start Search button. Hint with attribute description appears when you let cursor stay on attribute for a moment. If possible, use only those attributes which you are sure of. To begin new search, hit New Search button to clear all attributes. By increasing of the Maximum of Variances you can extend the search to fonts that do not exactly match your selection.

Method 2. Exclude

If you are sure that you do not want fonts with certain attributes, select those attributes in Exclude panel and hit Start Search button.

Method 3. Ratio

Criterion of searching is width/height ratio of letters in this case. You may enter the size of letters in any units, because only width/height ratio is essential. If you enter the size of just one letter, you may not be able to find corresponding font, because the unknown font on artwork may be stretched either vertically or horizontally. Better way is to enter the size of two different letters and choose Mutual ratio of two letters option. This way, the influence of stretching on the width/height ratio is eliminated.

Method 4. Name

Enter the name or part of the name ( condensed for example) of searched font into edit box. Comparison of names is not case sensitive.

Finding of Similar Fonts

Click on icon in Attributes mode if you want to find fonts similar to some particular from Glyph Identikit database. Remember, you can find identically looking fonts under different names, therefore try this approach if you do not have required font.

Special Fonts - Categories Mode

Special fonts are ornamental fonts like middle age fonts or fonts which are easy to recognize like fonts adorned with flowers, covered with snow. This group also includes fonts similar to special fonts like Bauhaus, Revue or Brushscript. Simple fonts with highlight or shadow are also included in this group. To search among them, select Categories in top part of the screen. Three searching methods are available in this mode:

Method 1. Category

Select any category and hit the Start Search button. For better understanding hints with help appear when you let cursor stay on the category icon for a short time. Categories are grouped according to their priority. If font may belong to two or more categories, search in the category with higher priority first. For example middle age font with melting effect should be searched for in Melting or bloody category.

Method 2. Ratio

Same as in Attributes mode

Method 3. Name

Same as in Attributes mode

3. Displaying and Printing

The list of found fonts is displayed at the bottom part of the screen (left bottom panel) along with sample texts (right bottom panel). You can print the list of found fonts, find similar fonts, change the sample text or zoom and install found font by clicking with right mouse button on the sample of the. You can print booklets of fonts located on your discs from the main menu: go to Font and then to Print Booklet of Fonts. Glyph Identikit displays your sample text only if it can find the font. If the font is not present on your computer, Glyph Identikit will display alternative sample. If you let cursor stay for a moment on the sample text, hint with font information will appear, including source of font (Corel Draw 7, 8, 9 for example).

Glyph Identikit provides three modes of displaying search results:

1. Full View - displays several lines of sample text, 1 font per page

2. Normal View - displays one line of sample text for each font, 5 fonts per page

3. Brief View - displays 3 sample characters of each font, 42 fonts per page

Pages can be scrolled down and up by clicking on small buttons with arrows.

Click font name to search for it on Internet.

If the font file is on your computer, click the sample displayed and print or install it.

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