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graphics84 · Oct 21, 2003, 11:09 PM

I have 1000+ fonts and I use Suticase 10.1.3 on OS 10.28

Does anyone know how Fontbook (built in font managment program in 10.3) will compare to my current set up?

I really can't afford to buy a new Suitcase version

anyone try it yet?

Severed Hand of Skywalker · Oct 21, 2003, 11:52 PM

Fontbook is much slower adding fonts and no Auto activation. Rather strange the Apple is so casual with Fonts considering the only reason they are really still around is because of the creative market.

DaGuy · Oct 22, 2003, 12:00 AM

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
Fontbook is much slower adding fonts and no Auto activation. Rather strange the Apple is so casual with Fonts considering the only reason they are really still around is because of the creative market.

So its clear that they don't want to kill Suitcase they just wanted to provide something good but not as good, for those creative people that don't plan on buying Suitcase. It sounds like a good plan to me.

graphics84 · Oct 22, 2003, 12:03 AM

sounds good as long as my old Suit case works... and I doubt it...

I really depend on the auto activation

KidRed · Oct 22, 2003, 12:06 AM

It holds up rather well. Other then auto activation as mentioned, I have no issues with it. It may be slow, but I highly doubt anyone is going to activate 100 fonts for each job. I have my sets set up and the fonts I want are activated and I have no thoughts about it. It's free, it works so I won't be upgrading Suitcase any longer.

graphics84 · Oct 22, 2003, 12:09 AM

Originally posted by KidRed:
It holds up rather well. Other then auto activation as mentioned, I have no issues with it. It may be slow, but I highly doubt anyone is going to activate 100 fonts for each job. I have my sets set up and the fonts I want are activated and I have no thoughts about it. It's free, it works so I won't be upgrading Suitcase any longer.

that's good the hear

does Illustrator still tell you that fonts are missing any differently?

kcmac · Oct 22, 2003, 12:37 AM

What does FontBook do during the upgrade to panther? Does it find all of the fonts on your computer and load them up or do you have to do it manually?

malique · Oct 22, 2003, 01:21 PM

what I hate about font book: it MOVES (not just copies) all fonts you drop on it into your user folder (or whatever specified). Regardless if you checked this in the Prefs.

I endet up having my old font folder with 1400+ Font folders in it, assuming Font Book left my fonts where they were.

Pah. It had MOVED all my font files to my user/font folder, left me with 1400 EMPTIED folders and no chance to get it back as it was before.

Even worse: I didn't recognise it at first so I rebooted for some reason and find me in a totally stuck and ****ed up system cause it couldn't handle the fonts correctly. Without telling me, of course.

Severed Hand of Skywalker · Oct 22, 2003, 02:30 PM

Originally posted by KidRed:
It holds up rather well. Other then auto activation as mentioned, I have no issues with it. It may be slow, but I highly doubt anyone is going to activate 100 fonts for each job.

It is slow and no auto-activation yet you still think it is good? What the heck is so good about it?

Mediaman_12 · Oct 22, 2003, 04:18 PM

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
Fontbook is much slower adding fonts and no Auto activation. Rather strange the Apple is so casual with Fonts considering the only reason they are really still around is because of the creative market.

Slower!
How on earth can it be slower? Suitcase is phenomenally slow, It would take some amazing ability to make something slower still.
I am not surprised at the lack of auto activation. This has always relied on creating plugins for all the individual apps that interacts win the main font organization program (even with Super ATM on OS9). I would have been amazed if Apple had created Font Book plugins for All the applications that would have required auto activation, from Word to Photoshop.
It could have been worse. How about a brushed metal app called iFont

.

osiris · Oct 22, 2003, 04:25 PM

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
It is slow and no auto-activation yet you still think it is good? What the heck is so good about it?

Then what the heck is Font book for? Mindlessly gazing at all the pretty fonts? I thought this would manage fonts - as in controlling activation. Ugh.

tooki · Oct 22, 2003, 08:59 PM

Font Book : Kia
Suitcase : Lexus

tooki

beverson · Oct 22, 2003, 10:01 PM

Originally posted by tooki:
Font Book : Kia
Suitcase : Lexus

tooki

Suitcase is hardly a Lexus.

But your analogy is helpful nonetheless.

starman · Oct 22, 2003, 10:43 PM

Suitcase is sh*t. It's slow, crashes, and is a horrible excuse for an application.

Mike

starman · Oct 22, 2003, 10:44 PM

Originally posted by malique:
what I hate about font book: it MOVES (not just copies) all fonts you drop on it into your user folder (or whatever specified). Regardless if you checked this in the Prefs.

I endet up having my old font folder with 1400+ Font folders in it, assuming Font Book left my fonts where they were.

Pah. It had MOVED all my font files to my user/font folder, left me with 1400 EMPTIED folders and no chance to get it back as it was before.

Even worse: I didn't recognise it at first so I rebooted for some reason and find me in a totally stuck and ****ed up system cause it couldn't handle the fonts correctly. Without telling me, of course.

Uh....

Wrong.

I just checked my file server and all the fonts I added to FontBook are still there.

Mike

Severed Hand of Skywalker · Oct 23, 2003, 02:17 AM

Originally posted by starman:
Suitcase is sh*t. It's slow, crashes, and is a horrible excuse for an application.

Mike

Yup you're right. But it still works better then Fontbook. Feature wise that is.

LightWaver-67 · Oct 23, 2003, 02:21 AM

I rely heavily on Suitcase currently. Yes, it is far from a perfect application, but it DOES work and the auto-activation is a key selling-point for me.

Font-book sounds like baby-steps toward font management and it MAY be something worth looking into in the future, but from what I hear as of right now, it's not all that helpful in a graphics production environment.

Looks like I'll be sticking with Suitcase for a little while longer.

Xeo · Oct 23, 2003, 04:37 AM

I guess I'm the only one here who relies on the default fonts whenever I do any graphics work, but then again, I don't do any graphics work professionally, or very often even. I just never know what other fonts to use, and I don't want to install Suitcase. Maybe Font book will help me extend my font usage a little, for the amateur graphics artist in me.

solitere · Oct 23, 2003, 05:13 AM

Originally posted by beverson:
Suitcase is hardly a Lexus.

No it�s more like a Toyota!

ajbaker · Oct 23, 2003, 05:16 AM

Does FontBook categorise Postscript fonts?

At the moment with a copy of Marydale I am presented with an overwhelming list of versions (bold, italic etc.) - obviously I would like all of these categorised in a submenu beneath Marydale.

tooki · Oct 23, 2003, 08:56 AM

Originally posted by solitere:
No it�s more like a Toyota!

Fair enough!

I think Suitcase is OK, but I liked ATM Deluxe better.

I need to try MasterJuggler again... it's been YEARS since I used it. (But it's made by Alsoft, which gives it a huge credibility boost in my book.)

And then there's Font Reserve, but it was bought by the Suitcase people, so who know how long it'll still be around (I assume they'll eventually merge the products).

tooki

KidRed · Oct 23, 2003, 09:01 AM

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
It is slow and no auto-activation yet you still think it is good? What the heck is so good about it?

Ah, gee, that it manages my fonts and it's free. It's only slow when you set it up. As I stated, mine is set up so I never have to open it. If I do, activating a few fonts is not that slow.

KidRed · Oct 23, 2003, 09:11 AM

Originally posted by graphics84:
that's good the hear

does Illustrator still tell you that fonts are missing any differently?

I just used Illustrator the other day, no font issues with it. I didn't open an existing document tho, I started a new one.

Font Book isn't as bad as the star wars death star guy keeps stating. It's not much slower then Suitcase, it actually PREVIEWS EVERY font nicely allowing for size variations (which is very smooth). Unlike Suitcase that won't preview a sample of all my fonts. You can set up folders just like Suitcase. While it activation isn't instant, you don't need to quit the app either. If you close a file, or open a new one the fonts will activate. So it's just a matter of time before Apple makes it's more 'instant'. So given that's the only negative, Font Book being free more then equals out for me. I usually know beforehand what fonts I want.

workerbee · Oct 23, 2003, 10:28 AM

Originally posted by ajbaker:
Does FontBook categorise Postscript fonts?

At the moment with a copy of Marydale I am presented with an overwhelming list of versions (bold, italic etc.) - obviously I would like all of these categorised in a submenu beneath Marydale.

AFAIK, the only way to get that in OS X in those apps that don't create their own font menues (like most Adobe apps, and Quark 6 apparently) is with Font Card. Which unfortunately is horribly slow, still quite buggy, and for me even produced that rare thing: a kernel crash.

I always wonder how people who state that they have hundreds of fonts open in OSX manage to use the mile-long font menu. I also wonder how in the world Apple ended up having such a nice modern OS, and no usable means of font handling -- something I'd wager a lot of their core clients would find very useful.

aapljack · Oct 23, 2003, 11:20 AM

Fontbook is like iMovie. It does the job, but if you wanna get pro about it, you need FCP.

Fontbook will be fine for most home users. However, if you do graphics for a living, you will still need a pro app like suitcase or font reserve.

-b

morgan · Oct 23, 2003, 01:22 PM

Long live Font Reserve!

I can't believe it hasn't been mentioned yet. I wonder if that will break in 10.3?

tooki · Oct 23, 2003, 03:56 PM

Originally posted by morgan:
Long live Font Reserve!

I can't believe it hasn't been mentioned yet. I wonder if that will break in 10.3?

See my post above.

tooki

hardcat1970 · Oct 23, 2003, 04:15 PM

Originally posted by malique:
what I hate about font book: it MOVES (not just copies) all fonts you drop on it into your user folder (or whatever specified). Regardless if you checked this in the Prefs.

I endet up having my old font folder with 1400+ Font folders in it, assuming Font Book left my fonts where they were.

Pah. It had MOVED all my font files to my user/font folder, left me with 1400 EMPTIED folders and no chance to get it back as it was before.

Even worse: I didn't recognise it at first so I rebooted for some reason and find me in a totally stuck and ****ed up system cause it couldn't handle the fonts correctly. Without telling me, of course.

same here. Fontbook totally messed up my system. I have to dig up all the fonts which it put into.

ikarus · Oct 23, 2003, 04:19 PM

Has anyone had problems with fontbook not recognizing fonts? It recognized most of my adobe fonts, but refuses to pick up any of my Emigre, T-26, FontFont fonts..

Not like I plan to use it anyway, Suitcase X1 is actually not too bad, they did fix the speed issue quite a bit. But I'm not able to use it in Panther, it eventually launches after like 5 minutes, but doesn't really work at all, is anyone else experiencing this? I guess they have to release an update for 10.3 compatibility?

starman · Oct 23, 2003, 10:16 PM

Originally posted by hardcat1970:
same here. Fontbook totally messed up my system. I have to dig up all the fonts which it put into.

How did this NOT happen to me? My fonts are on a shared nwtork drive.

Mike

slugslugslug · Oct 23, 2003, 11:54 PM

Originally posted by starman:
How did this NOT happen to me? My fonts are on a shared nwtork drive.

Mike

Probably because your fonts are on a shared network drive. Seems like the logic is just like dragging files in the Finder. Go between 2 places on the same volume and it moves them, but go from one volume to another and it copies. Sort of makes sense.

Though it seems stupid to me to move files around without at least warning you the first time around..

pooka · Oct 24, 2003, 01:08 AM

Originally posted by workerbee:
I always wonder how people who state that they have hundreds of fonts open in OSX manage to use the mile-long font menu. I also wonder how in the world Apple ended up having such a nice modern OS, and no usable means of font handling -- something I'd wager a lot of their core clients would find very useful.

Yeah, I'm not getting it either. Its the first thing I hear about when I update one of the designer's mac to X.

"What the ****? Can we get Adobe Type Reunion? This is the sux!"

Macromedia apps are the absolute worst. Having to scroll through every gawd damn variation of The Sans and The Mix is enough to make a man **** himself and die.

Couple years later, several os revisions and it's still the freakin' sux.

workerbee · Oct 24, 2003, 01:50 AM

Originally posted by pooka:
Couple years later, several os revisions and it's still the freakin' sux.

Not to start a flame war or anything, but just yesterday I was discussing with a friend about where OS X is a step backwards from Mac OS (6, 7, 8, 9). Not being able to group fonts system-wide was one point on our list.

workerbee · Oct 24, 2003, 04:42 AM

Another thing I was wondering lately: is there a way to label or rename Fonts so that they at least appear somewhat logically grouped?
Like
Univers 55
Univers 65 Bold
Univers 75 Black

instead of

B Univers 65 Bold
( 10 other Bold Fonts starting with B )
Blk Univers 75 Black
( some hundreds of fonts )
Univers 55

Some Fonts are even harder to find: Walbaum appears under R Walbaum Roman.

I can't see any way of changing this, as the font name as it appears in the Word or Fireworks fonts list does not seem to have much in common with what the PostScript Font file is called. Didn't there used to be a font suitcase file or something?

ajbaker · Oct 24, 2003, 08:17 AM

I'm intrgued as to why this has been discussed little before. It was only recently that I noticed Mac OS Xs font handling as I introduced my sister to it (who is a designer). I myself am more techy and generally get by with Gill Sans for invoices! Type Reunion was a simple (and relatively unintrusive) utility for OS 9. I'm surprised something similar has neither been included, or is avaiable for OS X. Of all the options for OS X, none seem to have a good review thus far.

I look forward to peoples comments when Panther becomes mainstream.

A