Adobe Font Folio (The big kahuna of font collections. If you or your company can afford it, this is the one collection to buy, hands down.) If you or your company can afford it, this is the one. Manage your font suitcases and printer fonts in 'Sets', like Extensions Manager! Fonts Manager is similar to the Mac OS Extensions Manager, but it manages Fonts instead. Font managers are undoubtedly a great utility which extends a great help you in order to activate and deactivate fonts anytime on the go. Additionally, the tools let you arrange all the fonts in multiple groups based on similar category.
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Thanks to OS X 10.3’s Font Book, most Mac users don’t need to buy a font management program. But if you have tons of fonts, share a font library with others, or have lots of fonts flowing through your system (from clients or collaborators, for example) you’ll need more features than Font Book offers. This review looks at some popular third-party font-handling tools.
There are three main font-management tasks: organizing font libraries (which also makes sharing easier), minimizing the number of active fonts in your System folder (shortening font menus and reducing computing overhead), and assuring that your fonts function properly (checking for corruption and duplicates). No one program does it all perfectly.
FontDoctor 7.0
Fonts break, and when they break, systems crash. Missing screen or printer fonts and identically named fonts in different formats confuse applications and printers, causing program crashes and surprise printing results. The solution? Call the FontDoctor.
FontDoctor 7 can organize fonts into tidy libraries (by either copying them or moving them), archive fonts into a single compressed file for safe keeping, and convert TrueType fonts between Mac and Windows formats. But the main reason you will want it is to fix corrupted font files, sort out duplicate fonts (or those with duplicate names), and weed out PostScript printer and screen fonts that have lost their partners. You can also sort duplicate fonts by their ages, saving only the newest ones.
Although FontDoctor can weed out sick fonts, it can’t always tell you how serious their maladies are, and its manual admits that some fonts that it pulls aside as suspicious (due to unusual programming) may, in fact, work just fine.
FontDoctor searches any folder, disk, or mounted volume for fonts in PostScript Type 1, TrueType (Mac, Windows .ttf, and .dfonts), or OpenType format. After scanning them for problems or missing parts, it will fix the fixable and organize them into a neat library. The program also lets you organize your fonts into a series of folders best suited to your workflow. Fonts you don’t want, irreparable fonts, or fragments of fonts (or those that simply don’t correspond to orthodox font programming norms) can be isolated or sent to the Trash.
Well-designed, easy to use, and clearly documented, FontDoctor is cheap insurance against misbehaving fonts, which are devils to identify and impossible to fix without a specialized tool. Although well-organized users may not think they need a font management program, there’s no substitute for a font-repair kit, and FontDoctor 7 is good one. Extensis Suitcase owners already know this, as FontDoctor has been bundled with Suitcase for several years.
FontAgent Pro 3.0
Insider Software has paid attention to its competition, and rolled many of the best aspects of existing font-management programs into FontAgent Pro 3, making it a leading contender.
FontAgent Pro scans your Mac and any connected devices, disks, or volumes, and gathers your fonts—either by copying or moving them—into a new library organized by font family; the exceptions are the few system fonts OS X needs to do its business. You can then organize the fonts into sets for batch activation and deactivation. You also can create multiple libraries with overlapping contents to simplify access to huge font collections.
One of FontAgent Pro’s hallmarks is automatic font activation. Open a document that has a disabled font, and FontAgent Pro will activate that font. For popular applications that don’t support auto-activation (such as Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop, and QuarkXPress), FontAgent Pro features plug-ins that will do the trick. A useful complement would be automatic >activation when you close such a document, but FontAgent Pro does not offer it.
FontAgent Pro borrows a couple of OS X’s font-management tools. For example, its Show Fonts command opens OS X’s Fonts Palette, which is useful for revealing the features of individual (especially OpenType) fonts through its Typography option. However FontAgent Pro doesn’t control which fonts are displayed in the OS X Fonts panel; whether they’re activated or not, if OS X can find them, it will list them.
While FontAgent Pro 3 does not offer any powerful diagnostic tools for analyzing what’s wrong with a font rather than just flagging it as suspicious, it will scan fonts before activation to assure they’re complete and uncorrupted. You can filter any problem fonts out of your library. This is probably all the doctoring most Mac users will ever need.
Master Juggler 3.0.3
Time has passed Alsoft’s MasterJuggler by, and it’s in serious need of an upgrade. It can’t, for example, go out and search your system for available fonts. You have to point it to where all your fonts are stored before it adds them to its library. From there you can gather them into the familiar sets that allow you to activate and deactivate fonts in batches.
It also can’t distinguish between the fonts in any Library/Fonts folder that are truly required by the System (just a small handful), and those that have been put there for all System users to share. It considers them all to be untouchable System fonts. If you want to activate or deactivate these fonts or build them into sets, you’ll have to move them elsewhere first, which is unnecessarily tedious.
MasterJuggler does check fonts for problems, but it doesn’t solve them. It just flags them and leaves you to do the fixing. If you have missing screen fonts, you’ll have to fix them. If you have a corrupted font file, you’ll have to isolate it. If you have duplicate fonts or multiple versions of the same font, you’ll have to take care of the problem.
MasterJuggler 3 adds a font viewer for seeing individual characters contained within a font, but it’s not well thought out. There’s no single view of the entire character set of a font; to find the character you’re after, you have to know in which Unicode numbering range it’s hidden. This can be far from obvious. You can also drag any character from the viewer into any text-editing application, but you first have to match the point size in the viewer to that of the text, or it comes in at the wrong size.
I thought MasterJuggler 2 was best-of-breed when it came out a decade ago, but version 3 has fallen behind the competition. If Alsoft wants to stay in the race, MasterJuggler will need automatic font collection, automatic font activation, and a more useful way to access the character sets of large OpenType fonts just to stay even.
Macworld’s Buying Advice
If you’re having problems with corrupt font files, duplicate fonts, and mismatched PostScript printer and screen fonts, FontDoctor 7 is the best remedy. While it sometimes mistakenly flags functional fonts, it will most often repair your fonts and organize them into a neat library. However, if you’re looking for a font manager that scours your hard drive for fonts, gathers them into alphabetical folders and auto activates them by project, I recommend FontAgent Pro 3. An added bonus is that the program will scan fonts before activating them to make sure they’re complete and uncorrupted.
[ James Felici has been using the Mac for over 20 years and was a member of the Macworld start-up team. His latest book is The Complete Manual of Typography (Adobe Press, 2002). ]
For more reviews about font managers, please see our review of Suitcase X1 ( ; February 2004 ).
FontDoctor 7 can analyze, correct, and build a new library from your far-flung fonts, all in one pass. The options shown here can sort identically named fonts by format or age, solve ID-number conflicts, and cull selected screen fonts, among other handy options.FontAgent Pro 3’s interface is clean, but its window isn’t big enough to comfortably see all the functions that it offers, including a preview pane where you can compare typefaces. By resizing the panes, you can customize the display.MasterJuggler 3.0.3’s Samples view shows customizable displays of all the fonts in a set. To compare selected typefaces, though, you have to create a custom set containing just those fonts.
Feature
By Mike Wuerthele People typically think of physical goods when it comes to Black Friday, but it can also be a good time to grab Mac software on the cheap if you know where to look.Wednesday, November 21, 2018, 06:43 am PT (09:43 am ET) Below are deals that are running on or during Black Friday (Nov. 23) and Cyber Monday (Nov. 26) from some of the better-known Mac developers. Where applicable, we'll identify when deals are available beyond Friday. Aura HealthMeditation is a great way to ease stress and reduce anxiety, and app-based guidance tools are plentiful, but Aura is one of the few to use machine learning to cater to your specific needs. The app offers a free 3-minute guided meditation session every day, but there are also 3, 7, and 10-minute sessions, mood pattern tracking, and daily reminders available as part of a subscription. The Lifetime Subscription for the app's premium features is usually $99.99 and is currently discounted to $79.99, but use promo code CMSAVE40 to bring it down to just $48. Private Internet Access VPNFrequent user of public Wi-Fi hotspots? Protect your data while surfing in public with the Private Internet Access VPN, a critically acclaimed service that masks your location and IP address to bypass geo-blocked sites, all while protected by a built-in firewall and Blowfish CBC encryption. Usable on up to five devices simultaneously with unlimited bandwidth, a two-year subscription is already discounted from $166.80 to $55.55, but using promo code CMSAVE40 reduces it further to $33.33. WALTR 2If you need to transfer files to your iOS devices, WALTR 2 may be worth a look. The app allows you to transfer ringtones, videos, PDFs and ePUB files by dragging and dropping, with it including features like Smart Adaptive Conversion for faster audio and video conversions, and content recognition that brings across relevant metadata. Normally $19, already down from $39.95, you can bring the cost down to $11.40 with promo code CMSAVE40. Radix '.tech' DomainsWant to set up a website but just can't find the .com domain you want? Consider using '.tech' instead, especially if your business or project is technology-oriented. While you can get a ten-year registration for $49.99, if you use promo code CMSAVE40, the price comes down to $30 for ten years. AdobeAdobe is offering a 25 percent discount on its All Apps subscription for Creative Cloud, now through Black Friday. The plan includes over 20 apps, such as Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, and Premiere Pro CC, as well as 100 gigabytes of cloud storage and access to services like Portfolio and Fonts.
QuarkSpeaking of page design software, QuarkXPress is now available through November 30 in a bundle that adds $1,597 worth of professionally produced typefaces from Fontsmith. These dozen faces include a total of 56 individual fonts including FS Berwick, FS Charity and FS Cattle. The set also includes 200 icons and you get them by first buying QuarkXpress and then following instructions to get a coupon code for the fonts. 1Password1Password also unveiled a special Thanksgiving deal, letting users send friends and family a free year of 1Password Families. FlexibitsFrom 10pm Eastern on November 21 to the same time on November 27, software developer Flexibits is offering at least 50 percent off its Mac and iOS apps. This means that both the contacts app Cardhop and the exceptional calendar Fantastical are on sale. Cardhop for Mac is now $9.99 instead of $19.99 but the real savings are on the different versions of Fantastical. This app is sold in three separate versions for Mac, iPhone and iPad — it doesn't even have a universal iOS edition — and two of them are far more than half off. Fantastical 2 for iPhone is now $1.99 instead of its regular $4.99. And Fantastical 2 for iPad is reduced to $2.99 from $9.99. To take advantage of what Flexibits says is the company's biggest ever sale, just order from the official site during this Black Friday and Cyber Monday period. ExpressVPNVPNs — virtual private networks — let users mask their IPs and guard their traffic, as well as access geoblocked services like Netflix or BBC iPlayer. Through Cyber Monday (Nov. 26), ExpressVPN is adding 3 free months to its 12-month plan, at a cost of $99.95. Once the first term is up, the plan will revert to its normal 12-month length. ParallelsParallels' Desktop 14 lets owners run Windows on a Mac, including support for transferring files between apps and operating systems. A 'Coherence' mode makes Windows apps accessible without the rest of the OS appearing. Through Nov. 28, Parallels is offering 20 percent off Desktop licenses. SetappMacPaw's Setapp, tested by AppleInsider, is an app subscription service letting users access over 100 titles for tasks like maintenance, creativity, and productivity. Through Cyber Monday a 1-year subscription is $69, 42 percent off the usual price. MacPawGemini II from MacPaw Separately, MacPaw is also offering a 30 percent discount on its desktop software. This includes Gemini II, an app for finding duplicate files on your Mac. Plus Wallpaper Wizard 2, a collection of high-resolution images for your desktop. There's also Hider 2 which is for hiding documents and sensitive information on your Mac. The deal runs from 3pm Eastern on November 23 for 24 hours. The discount is automatically applied when you buy through this link. RealmacRapidWeaver 8 developer Realmac is offering 30 percent off all its software and training videos from now. It is specifically a Black Friday sale but it's also marking the firm's 16th anniversary and at time of writing doesn't have an end date. Realmac's RapidWeaver 8 The app you'll want is that RapidWeaver 8: it's Realmac's web design software which normally retails for $99 but is for now reduced to $69. There are also bundles on offer with RapidWeaver 8 and various types of training. Plus Squash, a $15 app for compressing images which is now on sale for $10. To get the discount, go via this link and use the coupon code BLACKFRIDAY2018 at checkout. Best Font Management Software For Mac 2018CorelCorel is offering up to 60 percent off its software applications plus free ground shipping if you bother with the boxed versions. It also says there are 'bonus items (worth up to $135)' but it's not clear what those are. CorelPainter 2019 You also need to dig into each option to confirm that an application is for Mac. Some are but many are Windows 10-only. Among the Mac ones, the company is probably now best known for its graphics application Painter. This used to be $429 but is now $299. There are other applications such as the considerably cheaper Painter Essentials 6 (was $49.99, now $34.99) and CorelCAD 2018 which was $699 and now costs $594. Corel's Black Friday sale is on from now to November 23, 2018. Best Free Mac Software 2018MotifMotif for Apple Photos Apple may have ceased printing books for you from within the Photos app, but you still have an alternative. Motif makes a plug-in for Apple Photos which is a little less polished but lets you create, edit and print a range of photo books. From now until November 25, you can get free shipping and also 30 percent off all photo books. Use promo code FRIDAY. Best Font Management Software For Mac 2018 HolidayVMwareVirtual machine developer VMware is running several sales. Global Black Friday Discounts (Nov. 21 to Nov. 25)
Education Sale (Nov. 21 to Nov. 30) ![]() Free New Fonts For 2018
Additional Discounts (Nov. 21 to Nov. 30) Free Mac Font Management Software
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