[onlyone-jc]

Hi.

Just a quick question...

Will having a lot of fonts installed slow a system down?

Thanks,
onlyone-jc.

[Don Pickett]

In my experience, tons of fonts won't slow the system down, but it will slow individual applications down. Word is one of the worst in this regard: it checks the fonts every time you launch it, and the more fonts you have the longer it takes. Beyond that, Word will sometimes corrupt a font while "checking" it. If you need tons of fonts, download Linotypes font management app and organize your fonts properly.

[EndlessMac]

I think Don has it right. It will slow down individual programs. I don't know how slow though.

[JonoMarshall]

Any number of fonts plus Linotype's FontExplorer X and some degree of knowledge = no slowdown.

Next question: Does having a large music collection slow down the launching of iTunes?!?

[onlyone-jc]

Originally Posted by JonoMarshall 

Next question: Does having a large music collection slow down the launching of iTunes?!?

No, it won't. Simply because iTunes keeps an XML database of its library. The only reason I questioned this, was because I wasn't aware of how OS X dealt with fonts.

onlyone-jc.

[onlyone-jc]

Thank you for all the replies/votes.

onlyone-jc.

[peeb]

A large photo collection feels like it slows iPhoto down...

[JonoMarshall]

No, it won't. Simply because iTunes keeps an XML database of its library. The only reason I questioned this, was because I wasn't aware of how OS X dealt with fonts.

Hmmm, at some point in time my iTunes seemed to become sluggish, I've steadily worked my way up to 15,000 odd tunes and figures it was that?

Perhaps it was an update that did it or using Album art? It now takes a good couple of seconds to load and has more slow down when shuffling tracks about, etc?

As for OS X and fonts - IMO Font Book is poop.

[chris v]

Define "a lot." Adding forty or fifty fonts to your font folder shouldn't be a problem, but if you've got 3 or 4 thousand, then you need to keep them in own directory and activate them with a pro font management program like Suitcase or Font Agent. That way, you can just activate the ones you need.

[Graviton]

Originally Posted by JonoMarshall 

Any number of fonts plus Linotype's FontExplorer X and some degree of knowledge = no slowdown.

Agreed. FontExplorer's awesome.

Font Book on the other hand is a big bag of old lady poop.

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by Graviton 

Agreed. FontExplorer's awesome.

Font Book on the other hand is a big bag of old lady poop.

I used to be a Suitcase fa, but they seem to be going downhill. I have Suitcase XI on my machine at home, and it works well, but my experience with Fusion hasn't been good.

Of course, the best font manager evah was ATM Deluxe!

[Madrag]

in the OS 9 days I used Suitcase and it was very good!

In OS X I don't use any font manager, I just place the fonts into the Library and I'm good to go, I've never experienced any slowness due to the amount of fonts installed, but it's really a matter of how many is a lot, as chris v said...

[JonoMarshall]

This MacBook (home) has 750 odd, generally I only have 150 fonts active at any one time... no problems what-so-ever. Font Explorer handles everything perfectly.

At my old work place we had over 2500 fonts using Suitcase over the server and it kind've worked, odd font-based problems when generating postscripts though.

Now at work I have around 1300 localised fonts, but again, most of these are left over from old projects and only 200 fonts are active at any one time. I used to use Suitcase, but had some weird font issues in Final Cut, which were solved by moving to Font Explorer. (Although font corruptions were probably to blame and could've been rectified... Font Explorer just made the whole process much easier.)

If you want a simple font solution use Font Explorer... Suitcase and co work, but seem to require a little more effort.