Font Management

[Zendada]

Wondering who uses what for their font management.

About me: Mac OSX, individual user.

I’m one of those computer neat freaks. Yes I keep all my folder organized, my desktop gets cleaned off regularly, and my job folders separate file types.

I’m discovering fonts all over my machine from stupid installations. This has not been a problem but it just bugs me. I want to consolodate all the fonts on my machine into one place, weed out the dupes and generally do this with the least amount of effort possible. :)

As for opening and closing I have been using Suitcase 10.2.1 and have had error windows all over the place. Really frustrating. Not prohibitive though.

Today I managed to conglomerate all my fonts into one place with FontAgentPro. It will also manage opening fonts. Suitcase Fusion is out also.

Has anyone tried/use these programs? Are there others that are better?

[Teej]

I use Suitcase Fusion daily and it's come a long way from the buggy old version.

I've found that the best way to deal with Fusion is to let it do it's own management of the fonts by adding them to what it calls the "vault" which is it's own collection of your added fonts. This means that you can safely backup your font folders knowing that they won't get clobbered by it.

In my personal experience, the auto-activation is very good in Illustrator and Quark 6.5 but I haven't tested it with InDesign. The auto-activation even works well in Quark 4.11 under classic which is something I have to delve into frequently.

There are other alternatives which I've read good things about (especially the free Linotype management app called FontExplorer X which can be found here: http://www.linotype.com/2006/tools.html It might be worth giving that a shot or reading up on it before you commit to buying Fusion or trying others.

[urstwile]

I've been using Suitcase X1 at work, and Linotype Font Explorer at home. Haven't tried Fusion.

I really hate how OS X deals with fonts, in terms of scattering them all over the place. Gah! We had major problems adjusting to that (and streamlining it) when we first upgraded to OS X. And Suitcase seems to have its own weird issues sometimes.

I've been liking Font Explorer, but I've heard it's not advised to use in a production environment, I think it's still in beta, but I've been tempted.

[Zendada]

Well, I’ve organized my font library thanks to FontAgentPro, but even with it closed, if I open a font with Suitcase Fusion a little FontAgentPro window opens up telling me it is opening the fonts.

Just now, I opened AIM, and I had FontAgentPro telling me it was opening fonts whilst Suitcase Fusion gave me warnings about unopened fonts!

A warning! Don’t have these two programs installed a the same time. It doubles the hassles.

[jimking]

Suitcase Fusion. I'm very happy with it.

[carter the artist]

see, I'm a neat freak, and I try to keep things very organized, even with my computer hierarchy. But maybe I'm missing something on the font issue. I too, don't like having copies of fonts spread out in my computer (wasted space). However for some reason i don't understand the need to disable fonts. Am I missing something?

[urstwile]

Some older fonts are corrupt or incompatible with certain operating systems. Some have names that are the same as other fonts, particularly Postscript fonts, and these can cause reflow or weird spacing when you send your job to the printer, if they've got a printer font with the same name as the one you're using, but they don't use your version, they use theirs. (By the way, if your printer doesn't use your fonts, and uses theirs, stop using them...the printer I mean, not the fonts, or make sure to stress that they use the fonts you send not the ones they assume are the same as yours.)

With OS X, using font management software you need to winnow out the fonts that are going to possibly conflict with your fonts folder fonts. We had to do that when we first upgraded, as, for example, OS X apparently came with its own version of Helvetica Neue that conflicted with our Postscript Type 1 font version on our hard drives, but not everyone realized that at the beginning.

The more fonts you have open is a memory hit also. And a longer font list. Fonts are great, but too many sometimes causes more troubles than the variety of choice is worth.

[doubting_thomas]

see, I'm a neat freak, and I try to keep things very organized, even with my computer hierarchy. But maybe I'm missing something on the font issue. I too, don't like having copies of fonts spread out in my computer (wasted space). However for some reason i don't understand the need to disable fonts. Am I missing something?

It can be important to make sure that you are using only one
family of Helvetica, or Times, or countless other fonts that have
common names and many versions. Theoreticly you could do a
Collect for Output, send the files to your printer and have font issues
if they were provided with 2 or 3 families of Arial. If you're sure that
you only have one version of each family of fonts it wouldn't be so big
a deal when designing. I think if I tallied up our client's font libraries
we'd have at least 4 versions of most common fonts for Mac.

Some font managers I've used (Linotype Font Explorer for Mac
and Bitstream Font Navigator for PC), will scan you entire hard drive for
fonts and allow you to manage all of them without organizing. It's a little
sticky when it comes to System fonts though, because you may not
be as able to turn them off if need be.

[Zendada]

Well, I’ve gone through FontAgentPro, FontExplorer X and Suitcase Fusion.

FontAgentPro seemed like a great program interface-wise, but would get hung-up on importing.

FontExplorer X seemed like the (free) holy grail with its collecting and managing font requests but fell short on managing duplicates.

Suitcase Fusion does it all and on top of that has a view category on... well, font catagories. Humanist, Slab Serif etc. Its well worth the price they want for it.

Thanks for the advice and tips ya’lls.

[jimking]

Zendada, how's the traffic in DC treating you? It's driving me insane! :mad: I'm a DC native who now lives in the burbs.

[urstwile]

Glad you found something that works for you, Zen. Font management can be really tricky, especially in OS X.