[texhax] fontcharts and random symbols

[Karl Berry]

Hello Frauke,

    1. I want to make an inventory of what fonts I currently have installed, 

Unfortunately it is not easy to determine the names of every font
installed.  And you probably don't really want *every* font, anyway.
(Many fonts are installed under several names, using different encoding
vectors.)

    called \fontchart, which can be used in making a font sampler. Does this 
    macro exist, and if so, in which TeX distribution or package can I find 
    it? Is it a LaTeX thing?

It seems to be a plain TeX test file.  Just do tex fontchart.  See for
example
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/TeTeX-HOWTO-3.html

There's also a file called testfont.tex (tex testfont) which has
additional options.

    upper- and lower-case letters in a style approximating 15th or early 
    16th-century handwriting

humanist?
http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/bookhands/humanist/


For more info, see also http://tug.org/fonts/, which includes links to a
few different pre-made samplers including many of the CTAN fonts.  I
don't know of anything that attempts to be comprehensive, though.


Best regards,
karl