Comments on: Panther Warning: Avoid Font Book at All Costs

By: Aron Hoag

Aron Hoag — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 20:45:38 +0000

This thread is hee-larious. Just what I needed. I switched to OS X in 06/04. Started noticing little shit that bugged me: the way OS X accesses my hardrives & always dealing with the “spinning beach ball”. Not bad, but annoying & time consuming. It also seems as if Panther is significantly slower than OS 9.6 (I am on a 400 G4).

And now Font Book. Fuck this is rediculous. I have come acorss a site that talks about font management in OS X that I have found helpful:

http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20000.html

But this still doesn’t address the fact that Apple is pretty much fucking itself. All that money from iPod & iTunes is pretty distracting.

I know this problem sucks, but it is relieving to know that so many other people are affected by it, & it’s not just “you”. – Aron

By: jazzperk

jazzperk — Sat, 31 Jul 2004 23:07:11 +0000

I have recently switched to X and seem to be pretty much ok but had a real bad experience with fontbook. I copied about 500 fonts to a user font folder not thinking it would cause any problems. Then the next day I noticed that no apple app would open. I did not connect the font install to the problem until 4 days of work basically trying everything.I was ready to scrap OSX and return to 9 but then someone told me that if you copy fonts into the user font folders you can get some really strange problems. I deleted the fonts and bingo everything worked. The only thing font book seems to do good is display the fonts. I used ATM in 9.2 but how does it manage fonts in X?

By: mister studebaker

mister studebaker — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 06:09:21 +0000

I’ve been a font and graphic designer for ummmm, probably since most of the people reading this were in diapers.

I can unequivocally state that Font Book is one of those rare occassions when a great resounding need is met by a product so steeped in its own mediocrity that it has an effect of actually being worse than not existing at all.

Normally, a mediocre app can be wrangled or twisted or worked around. Font Book is not one of them. It is a roiling steaming heap of shite.

check this out: I have ummmm, at last count from 17 years of font collection, lemme check…

28,356 font files. The exact number of fonts (some of the files are suitcases holding multiple bmaps) I can’t rightly say, but I an quite certain it is well over 20,000.

So, I figured i woud start with The Adobe Collection, and then do the Agfa Collection, and then do the Bitstream Collection and then do the URW collection, etc. I made Collection files for each.

I was able to load the Adobe Collection, Agfa and part of ATF. Then it pooped out.

Apparently Font Book has a limit of 4002 fonts.

Greeeeat…. So when I need to find THAT ONE LITTLE FONT that I MUST HAVE, I can’t because it’s in some other collection that is beyond it’s load capacity.

And WHY is it beyond it’s load capacity?

Because the stupid fucking app copied every font into your User/Library/Fonts folder and runs up against a limit in the OS.

Now… did they EVER consider NOT loading everything in and simply loading the font info into a database for VIEWING, and then attach a loading script so you could load a collection or a specific font when you want it, but be able to VISUALLY SCAN your thousands of fonts?

Ummm, No. they didn’tthink of that, because the “Prosumer” mediocretins that Jobs wants to sell computers too DOESN’T HAVE THOUSANDS OF FONTS LIKE EVERY SINGLE FREAKING PRINTER, ADVERTISING AGENCY, DESIGN SHOP, AND SERVICE BUREAU DOES.

Jobs is selling computers to Mr Prosumer who uses the system fonts, and maybe bought a few dozen from Adobe, when his bank account finally bottomed out after blowing $3k on his G5 and almost that much on a handful of fonts from Adobe.

Apple computers are still best, but FONT BOOK SUCKS MIGHTY STENCHING TOURDS FROM MY FINAL VOLUNTARY SPHINCTER.

Mr Avanti Studebaker.

By: Ellen

Ellen — Sat, 10 Jul 2004 20:24:47 +0000

jhol – I tried font agent pro, and am still using it occasionally, after bombing out with font book and font catalog, and hating the suitcase interface. But it is NOT stable with large numbers of fonts, and will crash often if you turn on WYSIWG view.

By: Marc Fairbairn

Marc Fairbairn — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 23:58:34 +0000

c’mon.. have a little faith. it’ll get better… it’s still better than any other free font app…

By: jhol

jhol — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 05:55:53 +0000

anyone using Font Agent Pro with success?

By: me

me — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 20:14:47 +0000

bogs – at least you can all get fonts into this program from hell even if you now wish you hadn’t!!! I just want ONE font (Barmeno) to show up right now… I have tried everything but the little bugger just burrows deeper and deeper into my system and has lost all those essential postscript things as well!! Wish I’d stuck with OS 9.2 now – at least I could PDF all my artwork properly and open something serious without little mad icons bouncing about all over the place. Can’t believe I have just spent £100 to f**k up my mac like this – but perhaps I’ll get a massive virus now that will sort it all out!!!

By: GVision

GVision — Thu, 27 May 2004 14:31:29 +0000

Bought a new G5 in January with OSX.3, but have been too busy to make the switch from my G4 9.2 system. Thank God I found this site, my plans for today were to dissect all my font folders and try to figure out this mess.
Would have been a disaster! You would think that when developing new systems, they would be tested by people using software in a real life work environments.
I do have Suitcase 10.2.2, but fonts not activated in it are still open. Yesterday I moved all the Asian fonts into a folder on my desktop, but they still come up active when I open Illus 10. I tried to locate where all these fonts reside… but I am now totally confused. HELP!
Have also had problems when downloading digital images, The system makes all kinds of extra folders and thumbnail files. I just want is to know where my files are and not have all this extra crap thrown in randomly.
My email also keeps cutting out on my new machine.
Glad I spent big money on this new apple system… I was afraid of being left behind, now I don’t want to even go there.

By: KMac

KMac — Wed, 19 May 2004 21:47:12 +0000

Oh, thank God, I thought I was losing my mind.

I have spent the last three days trying to get the IT professionals at my company to understand the value of font management. Seeing as how I am a lone Mac on an NT network, I am often looked at with a great deal of distrust anyway. They insist that I do not need Suitcase because Panther ships with a perfectly good font management utility. (I knew better; any program that automatically dumps everything into a System folder is BAD NEWS). I will definately be forwarding this link.

By: tatoland

tatoland — Thu, 13 May 2004 00:02:03 +0000

THANK YOU ALL for confirming my worst fears… I am trying to manage two computer clusters, used by about 200 students on an almost 24/7 basis (design + illustration) and font management has always been a problem. Now, it’s impossible.

I’m about 40 hours into cleaning things up. Maybe…