Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

swiz · Nov 4, 2003, 02:29 PM

Why to this day is font management in OSX so ridiculously poor? Even with Font Book, I can manage about 15 fonts before it crashes and when it does it brings all other apps to a state of nonresponsiveness. Font Book has a great interface and its features are even good enough for a first generatioon app but its instability and domino affect on other apps makes it unuseable. It has caused me to reinstall the OS twice since last night, otherwise the system is noticeably less responsive even after restarts.

SO,
does anyone kow of a viable, stable font managment solution in Panther?

::maroma:: · Nov 4, 2003, 03:23 PM

Unfortunately no. This is an area in OS X that is just ripe for the picking. If some adventurous young programmer decides to write a font management utility that actually WORKS and is STABLE and has some quality features, they'd be terribly successful. Until then, we are stuck with the few options we already have. All of which are sub-par at best (for professional users).

But I digress... There just might be that gem out there already. I just haven't seen it yet.

workerbee · Nov 4, 2003, 03:29 PM

So far, I didn't have any bad experiences with FontAgent Pro, but then it's only been a few days, I'm not managing System fonts with it, and have not put it through any sort of real test.

FontBook, though, was a real disappointment.

KidRed · Nov 4, 2003, 04:14 PM

I absolutely and totally disagree that Font Book as well as others are horrid. Font Book doesn't have auto activation, big deal, I still had it managing over 500 fonts into 8 different sets and not one single problem, slow down, or issues with any other apps. You must have a conflict somewhere or bad fonts.

Now I am back to using Suitcase and other then the auto activation, i notice no difference from Font Book and as such, I also notice no stability issues. Everything is just business as usually with Panther and the 2 font utility apps I've used.

larkost · Nov 4, 2003, 05:57 PM

The real big problem with MacOS X and fonts is that it is sensitive to problems in Fonts that MacOS 9 (and earlier) shrugged off. Get FontDoctor and run it over your fonts and I bet you will see a whole bunch of problems. MacOS X tends to have significant problem with troubled fonts (look at your system log for messages about reserved range exhausted...).

FontBook does nothing to help counteract bad fonts, and tends to expose the problems since it constantly uses all the fonts.

swiz · Nov 4, 2003, 08:29 PM

Originally posted by larkost:
The real big problem with MacOS X and fonts is that it is sensitive to problems in Fonts that MacOS 9 (and earlier) shrugged off. Get FontDoctor and run it over your fonts and I bet you will see a whole bunch of problems. MacOS X tends to have significant problem with troubled fonts (look at your system log for messages about reserved range exhausted...).

FontBook does nothing to help counteract bad fonts, and tends to expose the problems since it constantly uses all the fonts.

I was totally unaware that there was an app available to diagnose bad fonts for OSX. I agree with you and KidRed that there must be some bad fonts in my library because I can seriously crash BAD after managing only say 25 fonts. I'll try the Font Doc. Thanks.

KidRed · Nov 5, 2003, 12:30 AM

swiz- If you crashed after managing the fonts then yea, I really think you have a bad font(s). The one thing I do know is that X doesn't deal well with corrupted fonts. However, it's a great trade off as I no longer have to convert TTF any more

chris v · Nov 5, 2003, 01:24 AM

Anybody have any luck running Suitcase X1 on OS 10.3? Just quits on launch for me. deleted all prefs, font databases, logged out in, etc. No workee.

Suitcase X1 works fine on 10.2, and the older Suitcase 10 seems to work okay on 10.3

Wierdness.

CV

lookmark · Nov 5, 2003, 02:53 AM

I'm running Suitcase X1 on Panther. It's OK. Longish pauses starting and quitting, but otherwise OK.

chris v · Nov 5, 2003, 08:42 AM

Originally posted by lookmark:
I'm running Suitcase X1 on Panther. It's OK. Longish pauses starting and quitting, but otherwise OK.

Ran the security update his morning,and the restart seems to have fixed the problem. Extensis has a "comptability issue" warning about Panther on their Suitcase page, so something's afoot, but it's working for now.

CV

KidRed · Nov 5, 2003, 12:31 PM

10.2.1 works fine here unless i choose RESTART, then it hangs the system and I have to hard reboot. Damn Apple security Updates...