Font Management: Font Agent Pro

[michelen]

I guess this is the correct place to discuss font management.

When we adopted OSX last year, we had to say goodbye to ATM. FontBook was not an option, so after some research I decided to go with Font Agent Pro. It's been mostly good, though InDesign occasionally gets confused and starts looking for fonts that don't exist (Universal Times instead of Universal News with Commercial Pi, for instance). And if the fonts don't auto-activate fast enough, InDesign gets tired of waiting and crashes.

With the new version 3, these problems seem to have gone away. The interface is more elegant, auto-activation is much, much faster, and it even tells you which fonts are being auto-activated.

However, we bought the workground edition so that I can maintain our font library from my workstation. The way this is supposed to work is that I keep all of the fonts on my workstation, and through sharing, everyone else has access to them. It seemed like the way to go for us--I can check new fonts and add them to the library once, instead of maintaining fonts on 11 separate workstations.

The only problem is, auto-activation does not work if the fonts are not installed locally on each workstation. Insider says that it should, but it doesn't. We're a little miffed.

Is anyone else using Font Agent Pro workgroup edition? Does it work for you?

Best,
Michele

[ktinkel]

Originally Posted by michelen

Is anyone else using Font Agent Pro workgroup edition? Does it work for you?

No, but you have piqued my interest. I have been trying to use Suitcase XI and am endlessly frustrated. Hard to create sets, slow to activate fonts manually, and not always up to auto-activation.

But I don’t need the workgroup version of anything. Wonder how similar the standard Font Agent Pro is? Guess I’ll go look.

Thanks for the tip. Sorry I can’t help you (though I think someone else mentioned this program recently, so perhaps someone can help).

[michelen]

KT,

I think you will be very pleased with Font Agent Pro version 3. Easy to make libraries and sets, nice WYSIWYG font player, fast auto-activation. There is a 30-day demo available at the Insider web site. Try it, you'll like it.

Best,
Michele

[ktinkel]

Originally Posted by michelen

I think you will be very pleased with Font Agent Pro version 3. Easy to make libraries and sets, nice WYSIWYG font player, fast auto-activation. There is a 30-day demo available at the Insider web site. Try it, you'll like it.

Thanks. On my way.

[michelen]

KT,

Have you investigated Font Agent Pro?

We had a visitor this evening--a half-grown raccoon appeared on the back porch at dinner time. I gave her some corn chips. She liked them. Are you ready to come home now?

Best,
Michele

[ktinkel]

Originally Posted by michelen

KT,

Have you investigated Font Agent Pro?

We had a visitor this evening--a half-grown raccoon appeared on the back porch at dinner time. I gave her some corn chips. She liked them. Are you ready to come home now?

Best,
Michele

We had a friend in Berkeley who had a raccoon as a house pet for a while. He got to be too destructive — spent idle time unraveling her rattan furniture, stuff like that; and then one day made himself a bubble bath using shampoo, but never turned off the water, so my friend came home to a house full of bubbles and an inch-deep in water. So she decided she should return him to the wild. Took him up to the woods up in Marin, got him out of the car to walk into the woods away from the road, and the moment his feet hit the rough ground with pine needles and other natural debris, he jumped, yelped, and grabbed his feet in pain. So she brought him back to Berkeley, and had to find a rescue place to adopt him.

Here we have mainly birds, including cormorants, egrets, the occasional osprey and eagle, and once, a wild turkey. And we had a hedgehog, an amazing-looking critter who set on our deck staring at us inside. But for some reason, no raccoons, though we had them in Westport. I suspect they don’t find much they like right on the water.

As for Font Agent Pro — downloaded the demo yesterday, and hope to look at it soon (I have disabled Suitcase already, but paused to do the latest security update to Panther).

[Cristen Gillespie]

I have 8 days left on my Suitcase demo. Please hurry! <BG>

[ktinkel]

Originally Posted by Cristen Gillespie

I have 8 days left on my Suitcase demo. Please hurry! <BG>

Ooops. Yes, ma’am! I shall do my best (as Ben Stein always says!).

[danakay]

Hello everyone. I'm a newbie here (and to OSX). I'm about to hit send on my order for FontAgent Pro, but for some reason feel a need to hear the verdict. <grin>

[ktinkel]

Originally Posted by danakay

Hello everyone. I'm a newbie here (and to OSX). I'm about to hit send on my order for FontAgent Pro, but for some reason feel a need to hear the verdict. <grin>

Oh, dear! Well, I do not have a verdict, but in spend-thrift fashion, plan to order FontAgent Pro myself. I cannot test it in 30 days, and what the heck — it’s only money, right?

I have seen enough to decide it is at least somewhat better (easier to use, more elegant) than Suitcase, which I have already invested in (and can always update if Extensis releases a new and better version).

Fonts are too important in my work to mess around. Anyway, that’s what I said to my spouse/chancellor of the exchequer when I defended my decision.

FWIW. Most of OS X is cool, btw. It seems to be mostly fonts that it messes up.