Wakamai Fondue, the tool that answers the question “what can my font do?”
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/24
Very cool web site that I only discovered last year, with the clever name: [Wayback/Archive] Wakamai Fondue, the tool that answers the question “what can my font do?”
Drop a font!
Fonts aren’t uploaded,
they stay on your computer
Back then I used it to investigate some properties of SMuFL (Standard Music Font Layout) fonts as sometimes editing a PDF is easier than manually entering/transcribing it in MuseScore.
Of course you can use local font tools, but this is far easier for occasional use.
The beta can do even more at the risk of bumping into bugs: [Wayback/Archive] Wakamai Fondue, the tool that answers the question “what can my font do?”
Note the colour matching of the text around the circle with the fondue background image.
Oh: it is open source too, written mainly in JavaScript, CSS and a tiny bits of HTML and Python, based on Vue.js and npm, and available as parts in the repositories of [Wayback/Archive] Wakamai Fondue · GitHub:
- [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – Wakamai-Fondue/wakamai-fondue-site: Wakamai Fondue website (Vue, JavaScript, CSS, and a tiny bit of HTML)
- [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – Wakamai-Fondue/wakamai-fondue-cli: CLI tool to generate a font’s CSS (JavaScript)
- [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – Wakamai-Fondue/wakamai-fondue-engine: The engine that powers Wakamai Fondue (JavaScript and a tiny bit of Python)
Technologically, it is very sophisticated: it translates a font to CSS then uses that to display the glyphs of its Unicode code points.
That makes it also a bit harder to use yourself, as pointed out by [Wayback/Archive] wakamai-fondue-cli/ARCHITECTURE.md at master · Wakamai-Fondue/wakamai-fondue-cli · GitHub
It was cool to see that the initial commit was in 2020, the year for me characterised by cancer treatments, but for most the most intense COVID-19 year: [Wayback/Archive] Initial commit! · Wakamai-Fondue/wakamai-fondue-site@b300cdc · GitHub
Query: [Wayback/Archive] Wakamai-Fondue – Google Search
Threads:
- [Wayback/Archive] Wakamai Fondue, the tool that answers the question “what can my font do?” | Hacker News
- [Wayback/Archive] Wakamai Fondue, the tool that answers the question “what can my font do?” : web_design (which shows that the site actually started in 2018, even earlier than the first commit – go figure <g>)
Images:
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What can my Font do background: oil fondue set with meat, sauces, baguette, salad, cutlery and fondue pan
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What can my Font do – main page
[Wayback/Archive] 420584751-a9e3a3d3-97bd-41db-a42b-8de2bddc6544.png (920×920)
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What can my Font do – beta page
[Wayback/Archive] 420584715-6974c8d7-ddeb-4c1f-8366-1bba7b93a49a.png (920×920)
--jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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