Linotype font explorer

[Guest ai]

here

 

Haven't tried but reports are good.

It's free because you can access their fontstore ala itunes

 

[edit] For Os X but there is an older version for windows

Edited September 15, 2005 by ai

[Guest borax]

 

This may be an interesting app to try out for people with font manager problems.

 

It's kinda like iTunes: you get a free font manager with an integrated store. There's speculation Linotype might add other font vendors to the store.

 

I tried it out at home and it seems to work fine. My font lib is not that large though. Anyone with a 1000+ font try this out yet?

[Guest borax]

Goddammit ai, you beat me to the punch

 

http://mograph.net/board/index.php?showtopic=4822&hl=

[Guest borax]

Ding-dong! We need a clean-up on isle 5...

 

Ok, someone shoot me for not posting this under Resources and merge this thread with this one, which ai was so thoughtful to post minutes before this one

[Guest ai]

Lol that was fun

[Guest borax]

Yeah it was

 

Lemme see if I can find a mod to merge the two threads...

[Guest Resbot]

I am downloading it now... verrry slowwwwly. Why is it 150 megs? Itunes is only like 20 megs or something. I am downloading the "old" pc version though, so maybe the new one is smaller and better.

 

edit - finished the download, the old version is nothing like the new one and is not worth the download. i think the huge size represents a sample library of all their fonts.

I hope the newest version gets a pc port, really seems like a brilliant idea for a font program.

Edited September 22, 2005 by Resbot

[Guest borax]

FontExplorer X is a MacOS X application (Windows version to be released soon).

[Guest Firebetty]

Has anyone used this extensively yet? I got a free CD at the HOW conference, and all the stuff I'm hearing about is good...but it already crashed on me. hmm.

 

Will there be a problem with tech support if it's a free app? I'm always a little skeptical of stuff like this being too good to be true. Anyone want to give me their educated opinion?

 

Thanks.

[Guest Sao_Bento]

Has anyone used this extensively yet? I got a free CD at the HOW conference, and all the stuff I'm hearing about is good...but it already crashed on me. hmm.

 

Will there be a problem with tech support if it's a free app? I'm always a little skeptical of stuff like this being too good to be true. Anyone want to give me their educated opinion?

 

Thanks.

It works fine for me at home. At work we have a setup where the user home directories are on a remote server (kind of like a computer lab at school), and it HATES that. Won't even start.

[Guest kinojay33]

Just downloaded it onto my MacBook--it's great for a free app. Thanks for the head's up!

[Guest PlayerHater]

I've had some good expierences with this at home but have not tested it at work. For me its been far more stable than suitcase and font reserve, both crash like crazy.

[Guest layton]

Me and the other designers at work have been using it for the past 6 or so months and love it. A million times better than Font Book.

[Guest Sao_bento]

Mac OS X is weird when it comes to fonts.

The fonts can go in many different places, and the specifics of how it all works are not very well documented, so let me save you some time.

 

Fonts can go in your OS9 System folder/fonts (if you still have one)

They can go in System/Library/Fonts

They can also go in /Library/Fonts

And Adobe, being the fine, upstanding freethinkers that they are, put their fonts in a hidded secretsquirrel directory located at /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts

 

After having weird issues running this on my Macbook Pro, I decided to reconsider the necessity of having 10k fonts when I actually only use about 8 of them.

After un-installing Linotype FontExplorerX and rebuilding my font library to the OS X base font set plus adding my 8 essential font families, everything was back to working "PDQ".

 

Special note: when you're galavantly deleting unwanted typefaces, make sure you don't delete a folder called "Reqrd". Without that, Photoshop won't work.

 

The moral of the story is 1. You probably don't need so many fonts and 2. know your system and pwn your fonts before they pwn you.

[a2visual 0]

Sao, what kind of issues were you having with Font Explorer on the MBP? I'm using on my G5 with about 2700 fonts and it's working fine, but I plan on picking up a laptop next week and bringing it over. I'm assuming you have to keep your fonts to a bare minimum.

[Guest Sao_bento]

Sao, what kind of issues were you having with Font Explorer on the MBP? I'm using on my G5 with about 2700 fonts and it's working fine, but I plan on picking up a laptop next week and bringing it over. I'm assuming you have to keep your fonts to a bare minimum.

It seemed to be lagging a bit in comparison to it's usual self - not much, but enough to notice. Since the last thing I did was install FontExplorerX and the Adobe Web Bundle, I figured FontExplorer X was a likely suspect, as free software doesn't always get the attention it deserves (and uninstalling the Adobe apps isn't an option right now).

 

In any event, things seem to be back to normal after getting rid of it. It could certainly be configuration specific or something - I'm not condemning Font ExplorerX or anything. It was more about the realization that I didn't need 10,000+ fonts combined with a little frustration about the performance of my machine.

[a2visual 0]

Good insight...I'll probably keep my fonts to a minimum and see how it runs. It would be nice if there was a way to activate a font that is on the tower without having to find the font on G5 then bring it over to the MBP to use.

[Guest Sao_bento]

It would be nice if there was a way to activate a font that is on the tower without having to find the font on G5 then bring it over to the MBP to use.

That's where stuff like "Suitcase Server" comes in. One, centralized font server.