gnome-specimen replacement

Question

It appears that the font preview tool gnome-specimen has been removed from 18.04. A quick search makes it look like it is outdated. Are there an replacement packages that I can use instead? Kfontview is present, but that would require me to pull the entire plasma desktop:

Command kfontview not found, but can be installed with:

sudo apt install plasma-desktop

I am not happy to do install another DE (currently using Xfce). I have disk space, but I want to save time when upgradeing packages 2 DEs => more upgrades to install.

Answer 1

On Ubuntu 18.04 LTS you can use any tool from list below:

• GNOME Font Viewer

  sudo apt-get install gnome-font-viewer 
  

• GTK+ Font Manager

  sudo apt-get install font-manager
  

  You can launch it with font-manager, it looks like:

  

• GWaterfall

  sudo apt-get install gwaterfall
  

  You can launch it with waterfall, it looks like:

  

• MATE Font Viewer

  sudo apt-get install mate-control-center
  

  You can launch it with mate-font-viewer, it looks like:

  

Answer 2

After some research I found the best solution: fontvuer

Features:

• sample text can be changed
• shows fonts that are available for the script (e.g. cyrillic) that you use

Install by:

sudo snap install fontvuer --edge

Use by:

fontvuer

See details in this very good answer.

Answer 3

Opcion Font Viewer allows comparing fonts with custom text, and it only requires Java to work.

For running the jar package, in the terminal enter:

java -jar [fileName]