quote:

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Originally posted by criley:
i dont use any font manager, do it myself, and it works like a charm. i dont say this to belittle font management software users, but i have never really understood what they bring to the table. granted, i am not in a design environment (prepress here), but i mainline font folders on a "as needed" basis right into my user font folder, and toss em out when im done. never had a problem.

cr

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again, not to be argumentative, but what is easier than having an alias of your user fonts folder on your desktop that your drag and drop fonts onto? and it is one less application to have running and have to keep upgrading.

actually, i have thousands of font groups that have been sent by many, many customers that i toggle on and off all day, and i have used lots of them, suitcase, font agent pro, master juggler back in the day, and i havent found anything quicker or more efficient than this simple drag-and-drop approach.

no right or wrong answer here, as long as what each person uses works for them. but i still dont see what the advantage of buying software is when all i need to do is drag and drop fonts to activate them.

cr

Hi criley,

Welcome to the forums, interesting post. The problem (for me) is mainly that these fonts will need to be de-activated, or toggled back and forth on/off. I understand your point, but this would never work in my environment where we have at last count over 23,000 fonts and about 7,000 families many (different) but with same names from different customers and or foundries, some customized in fontographer by some retard designer or agency ().

When I quit QuarkXpress, Illustrator, or InDesign, all fonts are immediately de-activated. Thus, I start the next job with only about 6? fonts active, required by the OS. It is important that I start every job with the fonts for/from <that> job and no chance of residual fonts activated for the last job to cause a re-flow or quality problem.

The simplistic method you describe, sounds great for a one way activation forever but is not really any method that will work in an extreme environment. I AM glad you posted the idea and it would work for many designers and file originators I'm sure. But on the board are many who work in large prepress and or magazine publishers where this would not be a recommended way to go.

I haven't tried the method you describe since like Mac OS 7 or so. I am curious, using this method, how do you de-activate your fonts? The more fonts you run active the slower and more problematic your application performance. How many fonts do you have active?
_________________
JoePostscript -- support administrator

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Wind Turbine Buyer's Guide


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joepostscript,

good morning! thanks for the reply.

i can't say what is recommended for whose workflow, everyone just has to find a way that works for them, and im sure lots of people are comfortable with different ways of font management, and have a lot of success with it. i can only speak from my experience, and i have worked in 2 large, high-volume prepress departments, and have used this method exclusively for 5 years, and all of our font issues have dried up. im not saying it works for everyone, but i can say that in my experience, it is the quickest, easiest, most reliable way we have found.

activating and deactivating is done simply by dragging the fonts folder for any particular job into an alias of my users fonts folder i have on my desktop (after my system fonts folders have been pared down to the minimum system fonts, naturally), and tossing them out when done, and doing a Empty Trash - Secure Empty Trash. jobs vary from very few fonts (10 or less) to a large amount (several hundred). there is no noticeable deterioration in sytem speed that i have ever detected.

the one drawback that can be mentioned would be when deactivating a fonts folder with hundreds of fonts, the Secure Empty Trash step can take some time, but in that minute or so we are usually preparing for the next job while it empties.

lastly, to be quite honest, this has become less and less of an issue over the last year or so as our workload has eased into a pdf workflow, where fonts are less and less necessary in our prepress environment.

none of this is a slam on font management software users, but an alternative to people who can't find a package that works well for them. and, the price is right!

thanks again,

cr

Using font management tools is to be recommended for designers since they particularly like to try out "new" fonts, often from any source, dubious or legit - left to their own devices, some designers would soon have hundreds, if not thousands, all running at once with duplicates to boot, and never turn them off until their computer slowed down to a standstill in front of them - then they would have to start checking, sorting and filing them into some kind of order too!

My biggest gain in time is that I deal with a whole lot of individual jobs each day. All I need to do is drop the fontns into Suitcase. If there are issues, it tells me right a way. If you just put them into your fonts folder on your system, or in Fontbook, not till you make the PDF, or when opening the file do you know if ll is OK.

Anyone have any issues with fonts loaded into suitcase sending the system into spotlight on a hard reboot?

First, your Spotlight preferences might be corrupt - I would use OnyX to flush them:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/20070
(don't know if it's Leopard friendly yet, but that may not be relevant to your case)
Within Onyx: Maintenance -> Reset -> Spotlight Index (can save an Archive & Install, or more drastic measures).

Second, check out the Extensis support material - well worth a read - general support references:
http://www.extensis.com/en/support/index.jsp?id=3902214
specific forums:
http://forums.extensis.com/jforum/forums/list.page

if you are using Fusion, start here:
http://www.extensis.com/en/support/kb_article.jsp?articleNumber=3902214

. . . and an independent source, bit dated now, but full of useful OS X font management issues (don't know who these guys are, but thanks chaps, for making this available on the web, hope you don't mind others making good use of it!):
http://www.jsmccarthy.com/downloads/technotes/JSM_TechNotes_3.pdf

A change of subject, but they do some pre-press info too:
http://www.jsmccarthy.com/downloads/technotes/JSM_TechNotes_5.pdf

quote:

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Originally posted by frailer:
There is also Font Explorer X. Downloadable from www.linotype.com. It's free.
There's also an install guide at: http://font.is/?p=38 Written by an interested user.
Works well with InDesign. Powerful font manager. The Linotype site will give the necessary details.

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For me it was - Suitcase...since OS 8 days...
heck I was a BETA Tester for Extensis for well over 5 years


but since I tried Linotype Fontexplorer

there has been no turning back -

my 2 cents



jfphini
_________________
If teamwork was a liquid - the confusion must be a gas

quote:

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Originally posted by laforce:
I hope this is the right place to ask this.

Can you folks give comments on what is the best font-management program for OS X?

We're looking at suitcase, but I don't care for it too much from previous experience.

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I too am surprised at the minimal mentioning of FAP.

I am the production artist for a toy company that designs and produces packaging in-house. I also maintain the 8 Macs in our dept. and we have been using FAP for about a year now, and there has been no font issues that were not easily resolved.

It's pretty straightforward, not a whole lot of options and preferences- very easy to use. It creates a library and organizes the fonts alphabetically, into a central location. It can manage the system fonts, and I have resolved some system wide font issues by simply turning them al of, and letting the system re-activate the fonts it needs, as it needs them.

The only "con" is that I have found the auto activation doesn't alway work as it should, for exaple, with AICS2, sometimes a file will need to be opened twice in order to avoid the missing font notice.

BTW- this is my first post, and I am looking forward to frequenting this site!

I think this question has been answered but no one has really structured his answer. There are several applications to manage your fonts, and extensis and linotype explorer are just two, but apple has - since the introduction of macos x its own fontmanager, Font Book. This app. Fontbook has grown better and better, and you can validate and activate fonts, or deactivate fonts, in apple terms enable or disable:
To turn off your fonts:
In Font Book, select the fonts you want to turn off in the Font pane.
Select an entire collection in the Collection pane, or select individual fonts in the Font pane.
Choose Edit (menubar) > Disable [fonts], or Edit > Disable [collection].

It is as good as linotype, which has however some extra's. Linotype installs plug-ins in your Indesign app, Quark and Illustrator apps f.e. (watch out: linotype conflicts with extensis).

I have been using Linotype FontExplorer X now fro about 6 months and it is really fantastic.

http://www.linotype.com/fontexplorerX?

Not only is it free, but it works awesome. It's kind of set up like itunes, you have your library on the left, fonts on the right. It have a built in store directly through LinoType. I don't know about you all, but I work with designers who download weak, hack fonts all the time from where ever they can find them online. This app gives you access to a reliable company like linotype fonts.

I know you are all thinking, free? How can it be good. Let me tell you, I work in a ultra high-volume environment, so busted apps don't work for us. This one is the real deal. I think it's free to promote traffic to their font store.

It has built in cache cleaners, system font removal (for those pesky fonts you'll never use but apple installs) - you can also (like itunes) have the app set up to copy fonts to your font folder when dragged into the library, and activate at the same time. Good stuff!

Give it a shot, you'll never use HackCase - uh I mean Suitcase again! Unless of course you are scared of new things

Let me tell you though, set up is cake and I have not had a font issue since I installed it.

Mario

Sorry but Linotype explorer can do some funny things to your fontscollection, esp. in connection to your dtp-program, I did notice. And tampering with Linotype font explorer's cache can have disastrous consequences I have seen; a printer had inadvertently wiped his caches and suddenly had loads of fontproblems.
It is a good application, but apple's own Font Book had developed and installs the fonts where they should be installed. Linotype creates a folder in the home folder, which is okay, but still vulnerable and quite annoying if you have to delve deeper.
But that is personal. Great app. but I no longer start it with login, I only use it when Indesign requests it.

I know no one designs on PC except me.
Anyway, I use Corel's Bitstream Font Navigator that came with Corel 11 (no I don't use Corel to design it's only installed for converting customer files)
Quick, easy font management and it was free. Works great with our small print shop using 3 PC design stations.
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Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:21

Most of the font programs have no issues, or few. Most of the time you learn how to work around the problems or issues. I, myself, try all the free stuff first, then only when they don't work do I go and buy something else.

I use LEX (as it's called by some) on my macbook and also push it when I can for clients when I do support work, but some are set on Suitcase (in some cases they can't believe something free could compete). For the Suitcase diehards I found Fusion with the 12.1.7 update and set with Vault is pretty good, though I miss the management that LEX brings (when attempting to import duplicate fonts it asks me--Suitcase stays mum).

I also love the Clean System Fonts tool in LEX, a great way to get all those free goofy fonts out of the multiple places that users love to install them, though I wish it was smart enough to leave the MS Office and Adobe fonts alone (at least the required ones).

[Quote - pubtech] "though I wish it was smart enough to leave the MS Office and Adobe fonts alone (at least the required ones)."
[Endquote]
Yeah this brings up a great point. Does anyone have a list of the system fonts for PC and Mac and a quick ref how/where to replace them when they get moved or deleted?
_________________
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:21

You can view the systemfonts list at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301332

Replacing the fonts,well that is a question of reinstalling your system, through the install cd (go to custom install).
Perhaps there are some people who want to help you?