Comments on: Mac OS 10.4 and Font Book 2

By: Joe Flory

Joe Flory — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 19:29:31 +0000

Quick update with my experiences using Font Book 2. Like previous poster noted, I was having 10-15 fonts deactivated fonts activating upon every restart and another 10-15 deactivated fonts showing up in Macromedia apps. Hung up the system trying to import fonts at around the 1500 mark so I trimmed my library down to about 1300. App very slow to open and load all fonts (90 secs) and seemed sluggish activating and deactivating fonts in general. So, it seems unready for designers/users who work with fonts all day and need professional management. Should be fine for folks with 500 or less fonts. I’m back to FAP which works great again after their recent update (3.02) which works out the previous glitches in Tiger.

By: blurb

blurb — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 00:21:24 +0000

Jon, thanks for the update. I’m still holding strong to Font Book. My work life is pretty boring font-wise and I’m not called upon to use a huge library of fonts; or open and close them all day long.

By: Jon Hicks

Jon Hicks — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 00:07:26 +0000

I’ve given Font Book a shot over the last few weeks, but I’m now back on Suitcase X1 now. Font Book would consume huge amounts of memory, and large amounts of deactivated fonts would show up in apps font menus - back on Suitcase and I get neither of these problems. I really liked Font Book, maybe with the next version I’ll switch.

By: Amy Jones

Amy Jones — Sun, 29 May 2005 21:25:01 +0000

I’ve worked through the Font Book 2 suggestions above, but any idea how you can get to fonts to appear organized in a program like back in the days we used Adobe Type Reunion?

By: Zooley

Zooley — Sat, 28 May 2005 02:06:41 +0000

This is excellent news! I’ve long felt that solid font management should be something built into an OS and with Panther we *finally* started seeing this happen.

Of all the talk lately about 10.4, this is the first mention I’ve read of Font Book being updated. Now I really really need to get off my lazy bum and order Tiger.

By: Feaverish

Feaverish — Wed, 18 May 2005 17:51:11 +0000

I’ve been using FontAgent Pro 3 with Tiger for a couple of weeks now with no problems (well, aside from a few bugs that it already had under Panther). It’s fast, and I love how you don’t have to have it running constantly (cough Suitcase cough) for it to auto-activate fonts.

Still, it’s good to know there’s an alternative with Font Book 2.

By: Joe Flory

Joe Flory — Wed, 18 May 2005 13:40:12 +0000

I was nervous about using Font Book but after reading this article I gave it a go. In Panther FontAgent Pro was far and away the best font management app, letting you create separate libraries and nested sets. However, after doing a clean install into Tiger FAP started acting very buggy so I ditched it and thought I’d try out Font Book 2.

So far, so good. I’ve installed about 900 (of 1700) fonts into separate libraries and they all activate fine. It takes a little over a minute when I first open it to create the font database. So, if you have alot of fonts and you need to access them alot you might be better off just leaving the app up and running.

I would recommend Designers giving it a shot instead of using that hunk of crap Suitcase. Meanwhile, I’ll wait and see when FAP comes out with a Tiger-ready version.

By: macsepp

macsepp — Tue, 17 May 2005 23:12:12 +0000

@Hicks:
Auto-activation in Photoshop CS2 works fine, I’ve just tried it out.

My experience with this thingy:
With each release of OSX I gave Fontbook a new chance. So I did this time. It became much better, seems to run stable now, even when importing a whole library like Linotype, it does its job. In the past releases I always threw it away and got crazy because of this “set” activating whatsoever mess… when you delete a set all your fonts are unsorted, yepee and still there. Same happened this time. Guys, don’t create a set, import your fonts in there, because Fontbook just copies them into your User/Library/Fonts folder, which isn’t good :). So I deleted all fonts inside the set first, and the set afterwards but that doesn’t delete them from your Fonts folder. ARGH!!! 2800 fonts and you are the one to find the lately imported.
Jon, your description does the tric, thank you. Use new libraries instead. It keeps the path to your original font files. Now I love FontBook 2 *hug*

@Junap
Font Agent Pro isn’t bad.

By: miel

miel — Mon, 16 May 2005 18:40:26 +0000

Jon, I wish I knew all the junk that you know.

By: merkley???

merkley??? — Mon, 16 May 2005 06:28:41 +0000

this was helpful and informative.