Monday December 14, 2009

3 Mighty Font Managers in a Typographic Battle

by Milind Alvares on December 14, 2009

fonts

It’s a question often asked: Which is the best font manager for the Mac. Font Book on OS X is great, especially when compared to the joke that is C:\Windows\Fonts—chuckles—but it lacks in areas of management. The current Mac marketplace has three major font managers. Extensis’ Suitcase Fusion 2, Linotype’s FontExplorer X, and Bohemian Coding’s Fontcase. All three of them from that part of Europe where most of our type comes from. I’ve been running all three of these for some time now, and here’s my report.

[Update: Thanks to the comments below I’ve realised that I’ve missed out on an important font manager FontAgentPro, without which this review is incomplete.]

Linotype’s FontExplorer X

Very popular among designers and professionals, and I can see why. When you start the setup, FontExplorer X offers to import your system fonts, and then installs some plugins for Adobe, Quark, and Corel apps for auto-activation.

FontExplorer-X-Pro

The user interface is nothing to die for, with weird spacing, buttons, but it’s not bad. It’s got standard library features, including sets, smart sets, and a healthy list view for your fonts. You can even group similar styles under one entry. You can choose to turn font previews on or off, depending on how you want to spend performance.

fontexplorer-review

FE’s main strengths lie in Auto-activation. For those of us who have more than a thousand fonts installed, it’s risky business leaving them all turned on. Font Book is supposed to have auto-activation, but even if it works it’s just for Cocoa apps, which leaves out most of Adobe’s, Quarks’, and Corel’s apps.

Here’s how auto-activation worked in FE. I created an InDesign document and used a variant of Helvetica Neue for the header. Then I closed InDesign, and disabled that font in FontExplorer. The next time I launched that document in InDesign, the font was automatically activated, and the text displayed the way it should. Other times I’m working in Photoshop, and I need to use a font I haven’t even installed yet. So I install it [even in Font Book], and within a few seconds it’s right there in the fonts list.

fontexplorer-details

FE also has an ‘Application Sets’ feature. This allows you to set a bunch of applications, and make fonts activate/deactivate on their launch or quit. This means I can have Garamond Premier Pro activated only when InDesign is launched.

Overall FontExplorer X is a great tool for a professional using any of the creative apps from Adobe, Quark, or Corel. At $115 for a license, it’s a tool for professionals.

Suitcase Fusion 2

Extensis has somewhat failed to capture the Mac OS X interface, as the app looks like a mix between Linux and OS 9. Take a look at that icon (the ugly one in the header). That’s an icon meant to look ugly on the iPhone, not on the Mac. The entire user interface feels dated, and plain.

suitcase

Nevertheless, after the install, Fusion imported all the fonts and placed them under “System Fonts”. These fonts however cannot be touched. You cannot activate them, delete them, rename them. You can’t even create sets with these fonts, nor can you copy them into regular sets. This means you have to separately import all your fonts into Fusion, to be able to do anything with them. At least that’s the feeling I got from the multitude of error messages that Fusion throws at you.

The only saving grace: Auto-activation. Available in Fusion, installing its plugins for InDesign and Illustrator. Photoshop [CS4] however was missing from the auto-activation list. There also isn’t any feature like Application sets, or any monitor for font requests—nothing. Fusion looks plain, and is plain. I wouldn’t recommend it. At $100 for a license, I’m not quite sure what it is you’re paying for.

Fontcase

I could talk about Laurent Baumann’s user interface spectacle for hours on end. Fontcase came along early this year and shocked the Mac marketplace with a beautiful font manager—something that type deserves. Every pixel has been thought about, in service to type.

fontcase

Of course, underlying Baumann’s design prowess is Pieter Omvlee’s coding skills. Fontcase is a fast, and feature rich font manager. You can see a thumbnail preview of your fonts, expand them as necessary, and see beautiful renderings of what type will look like with the preview options. Fonts from the same family are clubbed together under one thumbnail much like iPhoto events (or more accurately, Aperture ‘versions’). Fonts are organized into collections, you can create smart folders, and even use tags to sort your fonts. Fontcase has some amazing preview options, right from closely examining glyphs, to comparing waterfall text between two fonts.

fontcase-compare

Fontcase also has bonjour font sharing, where two Fontcase libraries on the same network show up without any configuration, and can transfer fonts to and fro from one another. Lastly, printing out a font sample is a great improvement over other apps, as you get all the glyphs, various sizes, along with some body copy text to give you a good idea about how the font will look once printed.

fontcase-prints

Everything’s great in Fontcase except for auto-activation. Omvlee has half-promised auto-activation plugins in future, but there’s no word on the when aspect of that. Fontcase costs ~$60 for a license; you should check out the trial if you haven’t already.

My Type of App

I have a huge number of fonts installed, but I keep just about 200 of them activated at any point of time. I’m not bothered by auto-activation, as I tend to use a limited number of fonts for my projects. If I need to find something interesting, I fire up Fontcase, and browse through the entire library. Find something interesting and I immediately activate it. I do have to restart InDesign or Photoshop for it to take effect, but this happens only on occasion so I’m good with it. This little expense after all comes with the best user interface a font manager could ever get. Fontcase does it for me. In general, Fontcase is more if you like to admire your type rather than use it professionally.

For professionals who require font auto-activation, look no further than FontExplorer X. It’s a solid and fully featured font manager, looks pretty decent, just not as good as Fontcase. If I’m mistaken about Suitcase Fusion, please do let me know in the comments.

Tags: design, fontcase, fontexplorer, fonts, mac, Reviews, roundup, Software, typography | Retweet

Reader Comments

Don newelementdesigns.com: I think, THINK, Fontcase is going to support auto-activation soon. I could be wrong.
Rich twitter.com/richardcassidy: Nice roundup – thanks.

I’ve used FontExplorer X for years now and still can’t quite believe it’s free – brilliant app.
Stephane: Before SnowLeopard, I would never work on a computer without FontExplorer it reminded me of the simplicity of ATM on OS 9, unfortunately it was so buggy for me on SL and no longer free that I recently switch to FontCase.

As good looking as FontCase is, it’s nowhere near as stable as FontExplorer but right now it’s still the best font organiser, the added way to categorised Fonts are really welcome.
Alan Valek alanvalek.com: I discovered FontExplorer through House Industries and I’ve never looked back, by far the best I’ve used—all these programs are simple and you shouldn’t have to worry about all the features—turn the fonts on and off and let me organize them how I want, that’s all I need.
Karen: I really like FontAgent Pro for a font manager that activates fonts as required – it seems far more stable than FontExplorer X. I haven’t tried Suitcase Fusion – and those screenshots ensure I’m not likely to.

Having said that, for a really beautiful user interface, Fontcase is indeed in a class of its own. It excels at comparing fonts, but for font management it isn’t really much more advanced than Apple’s own Font Book until it can perform auto-activation.
Ticci macstories.net: I use both FontExplorer X Pro and Fontcase. FontExplorer is great for the auto-ativation thing and Adobe apps plugins, but it just can’t compare to Fontcase for previewing and just “browsing” your fonts library. I know it’s a pretty huge expense, but if you’re really serious about managing and collecting fonts, this is the way to go.
Carolyn: What am I missing here? FontAgent Pro definitely has auto-activation. In fact, it’s the thing I actually -don’t- like about, since it randomly seems to auto-activate a myriad of fonts to the point it makes me crazy! I kept a list one day of the random fonts that it seems to have dredged up in my library, that I apparently was “asking” for, that ended up including music notation, arab fonts, chinese and other obscure fonts in my library. When I ask them about it, they suggest reinstalling everything -again- which has never worked. Very strange. And sometimes the program forgets how to do the appearance font listings correctly. I keep upgrading, hoping that they will get it right, since they do always seem close to getting it. I have used FontExplorer (the free one) but it didn’t have the elegance or some of the features of FontAgent Pro. I bought Suitcase Fusion but tired of it quickly. I wasn’t at all aware of Fontcase (don’t know how I missed it!) and will have to look into it more.
philbee philbee: The one reason I keep using Fusion 2 is: it’s the only font app I’m aware of that doesn’t need to be constantly open to work. They made a daemon for it that lives invisibly in the background, and does some of the auto-activation, some of the time. (Results with Photoshop CS4 have been mixed, Flash CS4 of course almost never works).
Chris Carlozzi elev8tor.com: Suitcase Fusion 2 has been cleaned up since the name change and is more friendly to use/manage than past versions, but the interface is still a letdown to use by current Mac standards. Don’t get me wrong, it’s better, but it feels like an Adobe app—Not too good, not too bad, just meh. I think anyone that has been around since OS7 kind of feels like this is an old dog that won’t die like Quark Express. And a new veneer won’t change that for most users.

At the opposite end of the spectrum you have Fontcase, a beautifully designed application that feels like a modern application built for OSX. But because of it’s early age it’s premature to call it the winner. It’s ability to manage smaller collections seamlessly with Laurent Baumann’s user interface is a welcome change to how font managers work, but it is sadly not up to task on managing larger font collections (over thirteen thousand fonts). Pieter Omvlee will no doubt keep updating the code and bringing more features to the the application, which hopefully in the future will make this the face of font management for the Mac platform, but as of now it’s good for the casual user.

FontExplorerX is the middle child in this group. Not the prettiest, and not the smartest, but it gets the job done. The application feels responsive under heavy use, and the interface is simple and intuitive. It might not win any awards, but among the contestants it can hold it’s own just fine. On top of that the the old version (which is free), 1.2.3 is still working for Snow Leopard, the newer 2.0.3 version add a couple features, interface update, iconography by Hick’s Design, and code updates.

I use Fontexplorer 2.0.3 to manage over 27,000 fonts and it works well most of the time when working in CS4. Depending on your stance on how many fonts you need at your disposal at any time, there is a great read over at The Design Observer that might help shape your opinion on how many fonts one should have in his/her collection.

All that said, none of these font mangers have really adjusted to the nuances of font management in Snow Leopard. So, as always, it will be interesting to see how developers adapt and progress their apps.

My 2¢
rick c.: i have to agree with Karen – FontAgent Pro ricks; it’s been great for our small workgroup.

i’ve got four Macs and two PCs and we finally have the consistent font management across platforms and Adobe apps that we were looking for.
Derek g2g3.com: We moved from Suitcase to FontAgent Pro years ago and would thoroughly recommend it, no problems with Snow Leopard either. Thought it strange it was omitted from original review!
Milind Alvares soggysh.it: @Derek: It wasn’t in the original review because—I hate to admit it—I had no idea of its existence. I searched all over, and these were the only three suitable candidates I could find. I’ve already queued it in Speed Download. Perhaps I could update my review in a week or two.
Aziz Light twitter.com/aziz_light: Great article.

I used to have the free version of FontExplorer (it was called Linotype Font Manager or something like that) then when it became strictly non-free I switched to Suitcase Fusion 2 – don’t ask me why; never used it.

The problem with those two apps is that they’re totally bloated for the “regular geeky user”.

I had tested Fontcase before but at the time (if I’m not mistaken) it lacked the most important feature to my eyes: the ability to compare fonts.

Then after reading this article I tested it again, and I love it. The fact that it lacks some more advanced features is a good thing in my opinion. Oh and it now has the feature that let users compare several fonts, and it’s better than the two other apps.

All in all Fontcase it the only font manager that is not bloated. Perfect for the regular Web Developper / Designer-wannabe that has a couple hundreds fonts from DaFonts to manage :p
bebe: Milind,
Very good (if not too brief) look at these managers. I would REALLY love it if you took another, maybe slightly more in-depth, run at these with the inclusion of FontAgent Pro.
James: There is one other font manager that you haven’t listed, and that is FontAgent Pro. It is also a decent font management tool supporting the usual expected features like auto-activation and even provides some font repair options.
Chuckles: Thanks for the article.

It appears you’ve overlooked a couple of key points:

1) You’ve omitted one of the 3 major font products – FontAgent Pro from Insider Software.
It’s full featured, has been one of the top three selling font managers for years, and has excellent auto activation support.

2) Fontcase is a great idea. I understand that you like it a LOT (I remember an older article on it you might have posted earlier this year). But there’s two absolute deal killers with the product as far as professionals go. Lack of auto-activation, and a proprietary database structure.
No auto activation is bad – but the database problem is worse. No one in their right mind will allow a company to ‘import’ their fonts into a locked file that can’t be migrated out of.

No thanks, Fontcase. Too bad too. It looked like a neat program.
Paul: What about server products? We use Universal Type Server which is basically a server version of Fusion. I like it, but the pricing is unreal, and if you what more than 10 clients they really stick the boot in.

Also we are using version 1, bought this year, but version 2 have arrived, so no Snow Leopard support for us then. There is no upgrade option, so we would have to buy the whole thing again.

Thanks Extensis, way to treat your customers.
Fred: Why no mention of FontAgent Pro? It’s one of the most use and one of the best — if not THE best. Please don’t write about genres of software you don’t have a comprehensive knowledge of.
Jim blog.extensis.com: Paul,

There is an upgrade path for Universal Type Server version 1 customers, so you need not purchase the entire product again.

If you have an annual service agreement, you get Universal Type Server 2 for free. If not, the upgrade is provided at a discounted price. Please contact our customer service department for details. http://www.extensis.com/support/

Jim Kidwell
Extensis
Paul: Well I stand corrected, there is an upgrade path.

So I bought UTS 1 in March this year, for AU$2499 but of course now Extensis do not support it, so I have to upgrade to version 2 for Snow Leopard support.

Can you explain that Jim? Why are you not supporting something you sold to me this year?

So to get Snow Leopard support Extensis have quoted me… ready for this… AU$$1,099
Eddie sligowebdesign.com: I’ve just tried a trial version of Suitcase Fusion but it keeps crashing when I try to view certain fonts on a clean, new install of Snow Leopard. Going to give the other options a whirl now.
Jim Kidwell blog.extensis.com: Eddie,

It is possible that the fonts that you are trying to preview have some file corruption. Your purchase of Suitcase Fusion includes a copy of Font Doctor, which you can use to check the file. If the font is unable to be repaired, replace the version on your machine with a fresh copy from disc.

This is most likely the cause of your issues. If you are still having problems, please contact our tech support team. It’s free.

http://www.extensis.com/support

Regards,

Jim Kidwell
Chris Stevens: As one of the technical team at Extensis, I’d just like to highlight that their are a couple of inaccuracies for Suitcase Fusion 2.

Firstly, Suitcase Fusion 2 doesn’t ‘imported all the fonts and placed them under “System Fonts”.’ It simply shows a list of all the fonts you have installed in your OSX system font folders. Whilst in the system folders you can only deactivate/reactivate them. The way SF2 works, is that you build your own library/database of fonts within SF2, separate to the system fonts. You can create multiple libraries to keep certain fonts away from others if you need to.

Secondly, it’s not true that “There also isn’t any feature like Application sets, or any monitor for font requests—nothing.”. Suitcase Fusion 2 has a feature called ‘Global auto-activation’. You can add any application to a list that Suitcase Fusion 2 will then monitor for font calls to the system, and it will then automatically activate requested fonts, from your library(s). You choose which applications are monitored, and it all just happens in the background (assuming you have the needed font available!). Check your Preferences window for this feature.

The review of SF2 is missing some of the other features that are highlighted for the other apps, such as printing, our unique floating previews, and the glyph viewer. We also have our unique patented FontSense, font identification technology, for when you want 100% accuracy in your auto-activation but maybe have duplicate versions of fonts in your collection. Some of the other applications just work off the postscript name alone to identify a font and struggle to correctly manage duplicates therefore. So that’s some of what you’d be paying $100 for!

To Paul – it sounds like you’re running the Universal Type Server 1 Lite? Not the Professional version, which would be why you didn’t get a free upgrade to version 2, since the Lite version skips on the Maintenance agreement, but is a cheaper purchase as a result. For comparison though, a 10-machine upgrade for Suitcase Fusion 2 would be around AUS$750, thus AUS$1,099 for a Server with 10 Client upgrades seems reasonable to me given the additional benefits of Client/Server font management.

Regards support, there’s a difference between development and support. Universal Type Server 1 is still fully ’supported’, for customers with issues, but is no longer under active ‘development’ since the launch of UTS 2 in June 2009. Snow Leopard was launched in August 2009 and consequently only the latest product version has been updated for compatibility.

Regards,
Chris Stevens,
Extensis Technical Support – UK.