I can even activate a group/set in FontExplorerX after I've opened a document and realized that one of the fonts wasn't active - and most of the time that's sufficient and the correct fonts will display - though occasionally I have had to open the document a second time or maybe once or twice reopen the application (both times I had A TON of my fonts activated as I was messing around with some design ideas and got carried away). The activation dialog can get a little annoying, but I find that it tends to actually work in practice better than Suitcase did - and I tend to just group my fonts into sets and will activate them in the program depending on what I'm working on/doing. Yeah, it wasn't quite as fast as I had hoped, and it at times has a hiccup, but it's light-years ahead of Suitcase (or maybe it's just a testament to how AWFUL of a program Suitcase is). Not only was it free, but it was faster than Suitcase in loading, seemed much more stable, fast, intelligent, complete (even as an alpha), better designed, more intuitive, and generally without any major problems. I was tempted to just trash it and go back to managing fonts by manually moving larger sets as appropriate in conjuction with FontBook.
FONTBOOK MAC SOFTWARE
and ultimately have me upset that I spent $100 on a piece of software that just made me even more frustrated and annoyed with font issues. It seemed to work OK (I have about 4000 fonts - mostly PostScript/OpenType with some in TrueType/.dfont), but it took forever to load (even with just my 200 font 'standard' set) would crash all the time, would just randomly slow my computer down, annoy me with it's strange interface quirks and non-intuitive group/set management, etc.
Last summer I purchased Suitcase X1 (most recent version before Fusion). I'm almost wondering if those that are praising Suitcase and knocking FontExplorerX are using the same two programs that I've used. I would highly recommend using FontExplorerX first, to get used to the concept of font management, and then, if you find there are features that it lacks, and you're able to spend a couple bucks, look into either of the other two options. Extensis Suitcase - cumbersome, clunky, doesn't manage as well as others I've used.
FONTBOOK MAC PRO
FontAgent Pro (by ) - not free, but handles lots of fonts wonderfully, allows you to create libraries, manage system fonts, and lots moreģ. FontExplorerX - free, easy to use interface (similar to iTunes)Ģ. It's not worth trying to work with, even if you're an everyday office user. So, what I recommend is to ditch FontBook. One bad version of a font, and bam! your system can get locked up, not startup properly, etc. It also seems that OS X is very vulnerable when it comes to fonts. from a prepress and design background, I know that fonts can be a huge headache.
FONTBOOK MAC PROFESSIONAL
This is how professional prepress/graphics work and, if you aren't one, then why so many fonts.?įontExplorer is a nice choice, just remember: managing fonts it is up to YOU, the tool you use is not important unless it's something from Extensis. How the system is supposed to tell which version of "Times" is needed for one single document? YOU know. The less fonts you have active ar any time the better.Īvoid autoactivation: it works only in a perfect world, but this one is far from perfect. Next time that same group will be available for activation for reading other documents from the same source. Just remember to deactivate the group afterwards. Using a font manager, create a group with those fonts and activate it, then open your document. If you don't know which fonts are needed to open a doc, rest assured that the program you're opening it with will ask for them by name. Seriously, you don't need all the fonts to be active (available to programs), you just need them to be in a folder on the local disk, so YOU can activate/deactivate those three fonts you need to open a document. The Western civilization will grind to a halt.
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