Type Lovers, is Font Book now fit for use?

When I installed 10.3 I was told Font Book wasn't a program written for graphic designers who use lots of fonts and keep them open often. So, I listened to the advice from some of the type gurus on these forums, got rid of lots of the fonts apple includes but I didn't need, etc., I bought Font Reserve and that has worked fine so far.
When I upgrade to Leopard, do I need to figure font management software into my budget ?
Any graphic designers out there with experience?...I mean I don't need thousands of fonts open at a time...but I do like to keep a healthy variety open and active...and what about programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign working with Font Book...do they play nice together?
Thanks
M

Hi
Whomever told you this was talking nonsense. How well Font management applications perform depend to a large degree on the quality of the fonts you have. 1st and 2nd generation copies of your font library should work well with any font management application you may want to use, which includes Font Book. Certain applications can cope better with larger and more complex font lists than others. How much resources in terms of RAM, CPU/Bus Speeds as well as hard drive are all factors that need to be taken into account. For example I've successfully installed (using Font Book) nearly 1,800 fonts, however it took Quark about 30-40 minutes to load with all that information. On the other hand I've installed between 30-40 fonts (Using Suitcase this time) and it crashed Quark on launch. That's because one of the 30-40 fonts was damaged/corrupted.
Of all the font management systems that I have used the best one by far is Linotype FontExplorer X (as already mentioned)
http://www.linotype.com/fontexplorerX
The best thing about it apart from it being FREE is its ability to clear out system and application font caches, something other font management systems don't do.
Hope this helps, Tony

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Font Book versus Word for Mac

I've installed a new font in Font Book. Now it doesn't show up in MS Word for Mac. Many other fonts are in Font Book but not Word. How do I synch them or at least make sure that new fonts in Font Book are available in Word.
thanks.

the google gave
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfxmuuvta-g
http://macapper.com/2008/02/21/how-to-install-fonts-on-mac/
more hits
https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=opera-portal&q=how+to+add+fonts+to+mac+of fice&client=opera-portal&channel=portal

Font Book Auto-Activation for Adobe CS3?

Font Book's Auto-Activation does not work for me in my Creative Suite 3 applications. I have read articles where people didn't have a problem with it, (i.e. http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/creative/2007/10/leopard-creative-suite-3/index. php?lsrc=mwrss ) so I assume it works somehow. All of my programs are updated.
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In that article, the author says that fonts "activate quickly" in CS3 when he uses Font Book; I think he's referring to the fact that when he activates a font in Font Book, CS3 menus are updated almost instantly. This has nothing to do with auto-activation - which isn't working with InDesign CS3 at all.
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My office has a huge library of fonts, but most I believe are used by our designer who uses InDesign CS6 on her Mac. I am using a PC with Windows XP (with SP3). When I first opened one of our .indd files to make edits, I received a message that the following fonts were missing:
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Your Mac user has a VERY old collection of Mac-format T1 fonts. There is no way they can be used on Windows, so they are always going to show up as missing. You can substitute the TT versions, and install those onthe Mac as well, but there may be text reflow. A better solution would be to upgrade to OpenType versions (which would eliminate the need for the Expert set at the same time). I beleive ID ships with several weights of Adobe Garamond Pro.

Which font and how to add a chinese font into font book that can be used in CS6 programs

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Are you planning on using the Chinese language in Illustrator? Or, do you just want a Chinese looking font, but using the English language? I use Font Agent Pro for font management. It allows you to install the font, view it and print a sample. You can look for Chinese looking fonts online ( i.e., myfonts.com ). As far as Chinese fonts themselves, I have no clue.

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t

Is there any way to embed fonts into a Keynote file so they're usable/displayable on Keynote on iPad?
No.
Or, is there a way to download fonts to the iPad?
No.
You can tell Apple what you need here:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/keynote.html
http://www.apple.com/feedback/keynote_ipad.html

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Under Mavericks the collection list shows up almost immediately and the full font list comes up in about 10 seconds for about 15 seconds to load the 617 font families, of which only about 25 are normally active. (I am in publishing/graphics and have a need for many font families)
Under Yosemite the font list shows up after about 15 seconds but the collection list takes 50 seconds!!!
There is the exact same number of fonts active but a 35 second difference in the speed to bring the app to full capability.
Font book appears to be loading the information in the reverse order with Yosemite and perhaps this is the cause for the big delay in loading.
Any suggestions other than?

I also forgot to add that for some of the pages that don't load or load slow. if you actually type the address into the address bar preceeded by "https://" instead of relying on search links or bookmarks it will load.

Having Font Book problems since upgrading to Tiger.

Once I upgrade to Panther, I pitched Suitcase, and have been using Font Book exclusively for activating Fonts and such.
After upgrading to Tiger font book has basically rendered itself worthless for me. At least half of my old font wont load through font book. On alot of my type 1 fonts, if I drag them to Font Book, then the font will appear to be loaded and activated, but actually only the scren font was copied to the fonts folder (user/library/fonts). If I manually copy the fonts into this folder, then they sow up in my Adobe apps (CS2), but still print lo res.
For now I have ditched Font Book, and have been using Font Explorer X, and it works flawlessly, but I'd rather use Font Book if I can get it to behave, as I like the interface better.
In addition, I am also unable to load many PC TT fonts through Font Book Tiger, that I had no problem loading through FB in Panther.
Any Ideas, or is it just buggy?

Well, Font Book under Tiger is still buggy, but it's better than under Panther, and not buggy in the ways you describe, so there's something else going on.
Adobe apps will "load" a bitmapped font into their menus but then tell you, if you select them, that the printer file is missing and printing will be at lo-res, which is what you're describing. You say you "manually copy these fonts to the folder"; by "these fonts" are you referring to the printer files (which you said were not being copied to the Users fonts folder thru Font Book)?
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Did you clean everything up after ditching Suitcase? I don't know what artifacts you might be dealing with.
As for the PC TTs that worked before but not now... that's the real puzzler.
In both cases - your Type 1s and TTs, what happens when you put them right into the Fonts folder, bypassing Font Book.
Get back with more info, and we'll get back with more analysis...

InDesign CS5.5 doesn't show the fonts in Font Book

I recently upgraded to CS5.5 Premium at the same time as I upgraded to OS X Snow Leopard (10.6.8).
While I am asking this question about InDesign, all programs in the package (Illustrator, etc.) seem to have the same problem:
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Has anyone else come across this issue?
In InDesign the only way round it seems to be to add the fonts I need to InDesign's fonts folder. But that doesn't change anything for Illustrator.
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You don't really install fonts IN Font Book. You just use Font Book to place new fonts in one of two locations on your Mac. If you look at Collections in the upper left corner of the Font Book screen you should see one called User and one called Computer. These are really just references to:
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and
[computername] > Library > Fonts
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BTW, there is the possibility you could have had problems with your 10.6.8 install. You might try running the 10.6.8 Update Combo as described in this article:
Mac OS X 10.6.8 Suffers Printing and Audio Problems

Font Book Works Great - What am I missing?

I rejected Font Book a long time ago. But I recently bought a new MBP and decided to give everything that ships with OS X Leopard a new try. Most notable was my experience with Font Book. I started playing with Font Book in lieu of FontExplorer X which had been working fine, except that it took a long time to load after logins/restarts. Granted, I no longer have thousands of fonts to manage. But I still open a lot of documents that use fonts that I don't always want active.
With Font Book in Leopard it appears that as long as Font Book has a font in a library, even though the font location is not in one of the "official" user or systemwide font folders, then it will nevertheless render and print it in the application--everything from the Adobe CS4 suite to MS Office 2008 and others. Even though the font is NOT shown to be active in Font Book, it seems to work as though it IS active when needed. After the document is closed the font remains "off." Very cool.
I can still see the advantages of Suitcase, FontExplorer X Pro, etc. for production shops or large design studios. But Font Book now seems almost too good to be true for more typical users. In earlier OS X versions it seemed to be next to worthless. Am I missing something or has Font Book really become as great a tool as it appears?

It sounds like the bugs in the Autoactivation feature described in this article may have been fixed, at least in your experience.
http://db.tidbits.com/article/9655

Font Book and duplicates. Strange Behaviour?

Hello,
I’d like to ask a question about Font Book and font duplicates.
Here is the situation. I’ve just installed Microsoft Office 2008 on a MacBook Pro (13’) running Snow Leopard (10.6.8). After the installation is complete and all of the Office updates are installed, I went to Font Book to check for issues. Surely enough, there were font duplicates.
In all cases, the fonts installed by MS Office (/Library/Fonts/Microsoft/) are older than the Snow Leopard system fonts (/Library/Fonts/). However, when in Font Book I Ctrl-click to “Resolve Duplicates”, what Font Book then does seems counter-intuitive, to say the least: it actually disables the newer Snow Leopard system fonts and leaves the older versions of these fonts installed by Microsoft enabled. No matter what I do, I can’t get Font Book to leave the newer system fonts enabled and disable the older Microsoft fonts.
This seems wrong to me and a source of potential problems. For example, won’t disabling fonts in the system folder and activating older fonts in the Microsoft folder cause future problems for the OS X system?
Am I missing something here? Is this normal? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Stephen

Thanks, 'noondaywitch', for your quick and helpful reply.
Indeed, Ctrl-clicking on the individual font families, and then also on the individual styles of each font family (regular, bold, italic, etc.), one by one, seems to do the trick.
I went through them individually, and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to Font Book’s logic if you unleash it on the whole lot at once. In this case, unless I actually checked each style of each individual font family, it would appear that Font Book sometimes left older versions of a font activated, while disabling newer ones. To me at least, this seems bizarre. But then again, I’m not Font Book...
Thanks also for the link.
Regards,
Stephen

Fonts don't print with Font Book

Hi,
Fonts I load in Font Book are looking fine on screen but they don't print - I have to put them directly in the Fonts folder (in the System folder) to do so. My printer is a Lexmark E120n is that matters.
What should I do to get them to print using Font Book?
Thanks for your help!

It turns out the problem was with that certain printer. The floor model and other models and makes works fine. the Brother support person was an idiot, and would not think outside the box. Luckily the guys at Apple and Office Depot did.

Is Font Book a font management software?

Is the built-in facility in Leopard OS "Font Book" a replacement for third party font management software (e.g. Suitcase)? Or is it still advisable to manage fonts using a third party software on a mac?

Leopard's Font Book provides simple font management software. It's definitely improved from the Tiger version. It would probably meet the needs of someone who had a relatively small font collection without the need for frequently opening and closing fonts.
For larger collections, or if you open and close fonts frequently, I'd recommend a more full-features application.
A good and inexpensive eBook from TidBITS on Fonts in Leopard gives you a lot of info about how it works:
http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/leopard-fonts.html

You can't use this version of Font Book with Snow Leopard!

Hi,
Since upgrading to Snow Leopard I get the following error message when attempting to open Font Book:
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Most solutions I've found via Google simply suggest reinstalling Snow Leopard. Does anyone know of a less drastic solution to this problem?
Could I copy the correct version of Font Book (v2.2) the SL CD?
Thanks,
Mateus

you should have fontbook 2.2 already if you installed SL. possibly you have an old leopard version of fontbook in a different location and that's what you are trying to run now. go to the main Applications folder at the top level of the hard drive and launch Font Book from there. does it run?

How to backup font book

Is their a way to back up all my fonts that are in font book? Thanks for your help.

Hi, k.
There are many ways to set up fonts in Font Book, but, assuming you've not done anything exotic, the folders and files in question are:
1. Macintosh HD > System > Library > Fonts folder (the /System/Library/Fonts directory).
2. Macintosh HD > Library > Fonts folder (the /Library/Fonts directory).
3. Your Home > Library > Fonts folder.
4. Your Home > Library > FontCollections folder, which saves any font collections or libraries you've defined in Font Book.
5. The Macintosh HD > System Folder > Library > Fonts folder for Classic (Mac OS 9) Fonts.
6. The file com.apple.FontBook.plist file in your Home > Library > Preferences folder. This is Font Book's preferences for your account.
Font book views the union of the fonts in folders 1 and 2 above as the Computer collection. Folder 3 is the User collection. Folder 5 is the Classic collection if you're running Mac OS 9 in Classic mode.
Rather than merely backing up one's fonts and Font Book collections/libraries, I recommend you backup everything regularly using a comprehensive Backup and Recovery solution. For advice on the backup and recovery solution I employ, see my "Backup and Recovery" FAQ.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Type Lovers, is Font Book now fit for use?

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