Font
Manager Shoot Out: Conclusions.
Intro
| Installation | Interface
| Auto-Activation | Conclusions
| Resources
After
all the tests we come back to the original question:
"What
is the best font manager for Mac OS X?"
Your
particular answer depends a lot on the type of work you do and
your particular interface preferences. At CreativeTechs we recommend
and support all four of these choices depending on a client's
needs. I see it as my job here to provide information rather than
giving a solid recommendation.
For
what they are worth, here are my thoughts when recommending a
particular choice to our own clients:
The
Industry Standard: Extensis Suitcase
A
majority (80%+) of our clients manage their fonts with Extensis
Suitcase. From talking with consultants in other parts of the
country, that is the case elsewhere. Suitcase was one of the
early major font managers for designers switching to Mac OS
X. There was security of a well-known company behind it.
To
be fair, consulting firms (like CreativeTechs) help perpetuate
Suitcase's dominance. Most of our clients use Suitcase -- therefore
we are more experienced supporting Suitcase. That becomes a
self-enforcing pattern. Suitcase becomes the safe, known choice.
If
you have a large, clean font collection, Suitcase is a good
safe choice as a font manager. Suitcase Fusion is a big improvement
over the previous versions.
Note:
Suitcase has a sizable contingent of detractors. I do find that
most people who complain about Suitcase instabilities are often
dealing with messy and corrupt font libraries. This is why I
usually include the disclaimer that Suitcase is a good choice
for clean font collections.
The
Contender: FontAgent Pro.
I
am coming around to FontAgent Pro's strengths. I've long admired
FontAgent's strength in cleaning and organizing messy font collections
(not a focus of this particular shoot out). I've used it in
this role many times. I'm also quite intrigued with what I've
seen in FontAgent's network font sharing options.
I
have not supported enough clients using FontAgent Pro to experience
how stable it is in a wide variety of environments. This could
be argued as my own limitation and not FontAgent Pro's. It did
perform quite well on our tests.
The
designers I see choosing FontAgent tend to be more technically
inclined on average. I would appreciate feedback from FontAgent
users. tips@creativetechs.com.
The
Clever New Kid: Linotype FontExplorer X
I
have a lot of affection for FontExplorer X. This is the program
that I currently use on my own personal workstation. There are
dozens of great touches I think other font managers could learn
from. Yet I can't recommend it for most of my clients for two
reasons:
#1:
This is a brand new piece of software and there are still rough
edges that need smoothing out. The auto-activation movie clips
demonstrate some examples of these (and those tests were more
successful than I was expecting).
#2:
I need to see how committed Linotype is to maintaining and updating
this program. The business model of increasing sales to Linotype's
font store may or may not work. If it doesn't, will FontExplorer
be dropped?
Time
will tell for both. I don't generally recommend FontExplorer
for clients who bill for their time and don't like troubleshooting.
But for students (who will like that it is free), or techie
folk (who like the occasional glitch) this is a great program
with a lot of promise.
Better
Than Nothing: Apple Font Book
We
rarely use Font Book at our clients. It just does not perform
well with large font collections (more than 100-200 families).
Typically the places I use Font Book are companies where we've
installed a small fixed set of fonts that don't change much.
As
new Macs get faster, Font Book's troubles diminish slightly.
Each time Apple releases a major update to Mac OS X, I race
to throw a large font collection into Font Book. We'll check
again with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Someday we may recommend Font
Book as a good font manager. Until that time, it remains a solution
that is certainly better than nothing.
Care
to offer your own thoughts and feedback? Send comments to tips@creativetechs.com
and we'll incorporate them into this report.
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