[starman]

Hi all,
I needed something to manage my fonts so of course I looked at Suitcase. What a half-assed piece of garbage. First off, it's slow on my 1GHz 17" Powerbook. It crashes on bad fonts rather than wrapping error checking around everything, and labeling fonts with keywords is a chore. Fonts that other font viewer apps work fine with don't show up in Suitcase AT ALL. Is there an alternative?

Mike

[MojoRising022]

No, it's not you...Suitcase has rapidly become a tremendous pile of steaming horse$h!t. The latest version was basically a non-upgrade that added a single useful feature (Quark 6 integration) that should have been a free upgrade from the previous version. Suitcase X1 is slow, buggy, and crash-prone. Extensis also bought Font Reserve, eliminating their best competetion.

Take a look at MasterJuggler or FontAgent, or wait for Font Book in Panther and see if that suits you.

[starman]

I have Panther, I'll check out what it can do.

I looked at MasterJuggler, but there's no demo version . I just want to be able to drag-and-drop fonts from my file server to it, view them, and organize them by keyword. Suitcase's keyword setting is so non-intuitive: you have to drag-and-drop the keyword on the font, and if the font's at the bottom of a window, the window scrolls just before you release the mouse so your keyword goes somewhere else. It would be better to just right/option-click the font and assign the keyword that way.

I can't find any reviews of MJ3.

Mike

[Mediaman_12]

What do you mean become it was always crap & slow. At least in OS9 it had real competion form Adobes ATM pro which kept it from suking entirely. Since Adobe anounced there where stopping development of ATM Mac with the OS9 version Suitcase had been going down the crapper.
Eather Extensis' Suitcase development is going to really pick up or Apple is going to drive tham into the ground with Font Book in Panther.
Also. Unless you enjoy real torture never move any of the fonts after you have loaded them into Suitcase. The 'Find Missing Fonts' will lock up the system for ages 'descovering' that you have fonts missing and then longer still when you tell it where each font is one at a time.

[Macanoid]

Suitcase, though not perfect, is an ok app I think. The last version is fast, has borrowed various nice features off of Fontreserve (bought by extensis earlier this year), and it's auto-activations feature works like advertised.

Let's look at the other options:

FontAgent:
Featureswise and interface-wise this app is perfect. Repairs and sorts fonts when importing. Has nice preview options, and auto-activation works like a charm.
This is the perfect font-app for me, except for one thing: it's slow. If you have anything over a few hunderd fonts, you're in trouble.
Scrolling - very slow
Quiting - dogslow (anything between 1 and 5 minutes)
The developper said a new version should be available later this year and, besides be 100% cocoa, will be much faster!
Keep an eye on this one!

Masterjugler:
Nice interface, decent font manager
Big no-no: no auto-ativation, and not planned!!


Panther Font Book
Nice consumer app if you need to handle but a few fonts!!
no auto activation (yet)

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Yes it sucks but it is better them Apples font book.

[starman]

Originally posted by Disgruntled Head of C-3PO:
Yes it sucks but it is better them Apples font book.

Yeah, now I'm itching to play with that, but it's pizza and beer night so I won't get to it until much later or tomorrow.

I wish I could get more info on MJ. Four months into the release and not one review.

Mike

[Silky Voice of The Gorn]

Originally posted by Macanoid:
Panther Font Book
Nice consumer app if you need to handle but a few fonts!!
no auto activation (yet) [/B]

Is auto activation really neccesary? What I mean is, the dark days of OS 7/8/9 and fonts bogging down system resources are over. I have a shiteload of fonts (490 to be exact) loaded in my Panther, and have no speed issues.

[Macanoid]

that's one way of doing it too of course.
I have well of a thousand fonts I have no desire to put in my system folder, so auto-activation is a big deal for me, but perhaps not for others. You're right

Personally I can't wait for FontAgent to solve the speed issue - it's the only thing that keeps me from using it. It's everything a font manager should be, feature wise!!

[malvolio]

I'm a former Suitcase user who now swears by FontAgent Pro. I keep my fonts divided up into manageable sets of a couple hundred fonts each, and don't have the mentioned slowness problem. FA quits in just a few seconds on my machine.

[KeriVit]

Personally, I think all fonts, font programs and font managers suck!

Coming form the prepress world, fonts and font programs are the biigest problem we have. I mean how many different versions of "font name" are there really out there? It drives us nuts and costs us money on a dialy basis.

The solution: everyone use, Times and Helvetica. Thanks!

BTW- We use Font Reserve and Suitcase. We have Font Reserve to be superior- except when it comes to running Quark in Classic- NASTY!

Once all programs are OSX, I'll bring Font Reserve up first, the maybe Suitcase.

PS- Go Red Sox!

[chris.p]

No, everyone use Courier please

[starman]

Well, i'm playing with FontAgent Pro and it's giving me trouble; although not as much as Suitcase. Legal, good fonts that I actually paid for or got from Corel Draw are showing up corrupted, whereas Suitcase and X Font Info show them fine. It doesn't tell you which fonts had problems on an import - 74 fonts, 58 imported, 16 missing -- WHICH 16?

EDIT - I quit and restarted FAP and the corruption issue went away. Still no log on the missing fonts.
Mike

[starman]

OMG....Panther's Font Book ROCKS! It doesn't crash, it likes the fonts the other apps do, and it's FAST!!!!!!!!!!

Mike