Font management

[Shane Drew]

I use typograph myself.

Easy Peasy to load and unload fonts, and it shows them in types, styles, or font name.

[John Childs]

Well foamcutter, I’m surprised to hear that you use five hundred fonts on a regular basis. I max out at something like a couple of dozen, and these, together with the system fonts, are all that is on my computer.

I have always used a font manager; in the old days, when memory cost over a hundred pounds per megabyte, I had to, but today it’s just a convenience as I don’t want to be scrolling down an interminable list to get at the font I want, not to mention the performance hit.

Make sure you buy a good one with the right facilities as this will repay it’s cost over and again. For instance, in my mind, when opening a document, a good font manger should automatically open up any fonts in that document which aren’t already active.

[Alan Drury]

Fontnavigator that came with Corel will be ok for your needs, you can add fonts to the catalogue from any drive or folder, then just drag them from one pane to another as you install or uninstall. If Corel Draw opens a file and the font is not installed but IS in the catalogue then you will be prompted to install at that time and this is automatic so the file opens correctly.
*note for X3 users when dragging font to installed pane when X3 is running there can be an apparent system lock when the font is dragged over – this will clear after a few seconds or install your fonts with X3 not running – automatic font install within Draw is not affected.
Alan D

[Marcella Ross]

quote John Childs:

a good font manger should automatically open up any fonts in that document which aren’t already active.

that would be great…… I quite often receive artwork from customers and when I try to open it, it replaces the fonts…. even though I know I have those fonts on my system, it can be a pain.

Shane – what’s Typograph?

Marcella

[Shane Drew]

Marcella, have a look here http://www.neuber.com/typograph/

[Marcella Ross]

thanks Shane. 😀

[John Childs]

Marcella,

Any font manager will substitute to a default font if the original is not in your collection. That goes for different versions of the same font from different type foundries as well as ones that you just downright don’t have.

The important thing is that they give you a warning before doing so then you can choose whether to accept the substitution or not. If it is just a case of using your version of Gill rather than the original then you would probably accept but whatever happens you should be made aware of problems.

A bonus is that, if that happens, it will come up with a box saying that font xyz was not available and has been subsituted for the default. Then you know that you need font xyz and don’t waste time trying to identify it.

[Marcella Ross]

Hi John,

yeah, I have that already, corel does that. But sometimes Corel can’t find some fonts in my system and substitutes them. Only causes me minor annoyance as I don’t ever use corel for reasons other than opening up a customers artwork. I don’t know how to use Corel 😳

I have a small program called fontfinder, it allows me to look through fonts to see what they look like. But I have discs full of fonts that are listed alphabetically and even with fontfinder would take forever to find what you’re looking for if you don’t know the name. My last Impact disc alone has 4000 ttf’s, not to mention others so something that can categorise them would be brilliant!!!! 😀

[Marcella Ross]

quote Shane Drew:

Marcella, have a look here http://www.neuber.com/typograph/

Shane, I’ve just downloaded this to have a look at it. At a quick glance it certainly seems better than fontfinder. I’ll get as good look at it later and see how it goes!

thanks again.

Marcella 😀

[Lance Sherrard]

OK, we all need some sort of catalogueing I suppose for our fonts, but first we need a basic understanding of what we already have, and what we need and don’t need.
According to Bitstream I only have 83 fonts installed.
I assume most of these are system requirements, some of them I am unlikely to use.
How do I know which can and can’t be uninstalled ?

Fonts are a huge subject and I know and understand very little of it at the moment.

best

lance

[Fran Hollywood]

Thanks for the replies,

I would be with Lance on:-

quote :

but first we need a basic understanding of what we already have, and what we need and don’t need

and to try and organise them accordingly.

I just wondered what systems other people used, to efficiently find and use the appropriate font. A font manager seems to be the way to go from the posts above, it just finding the one that’s best suited. l must check out Typograph (thanks Shane).

John, I phrased that badly, we have probably only ever used 4 – 500 fonts ever with the rest just sitting on the system. We have a favourite selection we use when a font isn’t specified.

Cheers