Next

The Fontmatrix Handbook

Blagovest Petrov

Pierre Marchand

Alexandre Prokoudine

Revision Fontmatrix 0.11 (2026-04-29)

Copyright © 2007, 2026 The Fontmatrix contributors

Fontmatrix is a font manager for adventurous graphic designers and typesetters who need to manage hundreds and even thousands of fonts.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Very Basics
Why Use a Font Manager
Why Fontmatrix
3. User Interface
Menu bar
Main area
Browse Fonts sidebar
Names
Previews
Folders
Tags sidebar
Status bar
System tray
4. Managing the Font Collection
Importing fonts
Activating and deactivating fonts
What activation does
Editing a font
Using tags
Why
How to add tags
Editing and removing tags
5. Viewing Fonts
Font overview
Sample text
Sample text collection
Navigation and rendering
OpenType features
Variations
Glyphs chart
6. Searching for Fonts
Generic metadata fields search
PANOSE metadata search
Filtering by language
Filtering by licence
Finding duplicates
Variable and colour fonts
Searching using bitmap samples
7. Comparisons
Comparison of fonts
Adding fonts for comparison
Comparing fonts
Cleaning the playground
Comparison of glyphs
8. Exporting and Printing
Exporting fonts
Printing fonts
9. Font Books
Creating font books
Creating font book templates
10. Additional Tools
Checking the database
Editing PANOSE metadata
Viewing TrueType tables
Extracting fonts from documents
Exporting font info for packaging
11. Setting Up
General
System tray
Display
Service
Samples collection
Files & folders
Shortcuts
Text layout engine options
12. Contributing
Testing and reporting
Crashes
Reporting bugs and requesting features
Translating
Programming
13. Useful Online Resources
Contacting developers and fellow users
Looking for free/libre fonts
14. Credits and License