A friend of mine just sent a pretty well researched report on Font Book in Panther to Macintouch today. I'd suspect you'll be able to read it in the next couple of days.
I was able to read it before he sent it and Font Book is a mixed blessing. He's tested it with various apps (Quark 4,5 and 6, InDesign, Word X, and few others) with various good and bad results. Suffice it to say that InDesign was the best behaved of all the applications...
I've never tried MasterJuggler before (in fact, I didn't even know that it allowed you to activate and deactivate fonts), but it looks like they have a new version out.
They don't have a demo out, though, so I wasn't able to test it.
But without some way to manage 4,000+ fonts or more that many people have in their shops, all those other features are "eye candy" and likely many will stick to OS 9.
FontBook looks completely welcome, but I have to wonder at statements like these.
What about Suitcase? FontAgent? MasterJuggler?
(A week ago, I would have added FontReserve, but Extensis just bought 'em out, so we'll see where that goes.)
You can point flaws in each of these solutions -- and each has its frustrations -- but I've tested all of the above (except for MasterJuggler), and they all work.
Apple polish is all well and good, but implying there's no way to manage fonts in OS X just isn't true.
FontBook looks completely welcome, but I have to wonder at statements like these.
What about Suitcase? FontAgent? MasterJuggler?
(A week ago, I would have added FontReserve, but Extensis just bought 'em out, so we'll see where that goes.)
You can point flaws in each of these solutions -- and each has its frustrations -- but I've tested all of the above (except for MasterJuggler), and they all work.
Apple polish is all well and good, but implying there's just no way to manage fonts in OS X just isn't true
Indeed they "work" to some extent, but if all you are talking about is just that you can indeed get the job done with them without regard to the efficiency or elegance of the solution, than why are we all on a Mac forum discussing this?
Hell, Windows can do most of what a Mac can do if you don't care about the elegance or efficiency or user friendliness.. You can also get a Windows box for less than a Mac box in most cases, with more expandability and upgradability.
The mere existence of a solution that "sort of works" in no way invalidates my statement. Perhaps my exact wording wasn't perfect, but if the solution doesn't work as well in OS X as it does in OS 9, people that deal with a lot of fonts all the time have one less reason to upgrade.
That's not even taking into account all the hardware driver issues I also mentioned.
Indeed they "work" to some extent, but if all you are talking about is just that you can indeed get the job done with them without regard to the efficiency or elegance of the solution, than why are we all on a Mac forum discussing this?
Hell, Windows can do most of what a Mac can do if you don't care about the elegance or efficiency or user friendliness.. You can also get a Windows box for less than a Mac box in most cases, with more expandability and upgradability.
The mere existence of a solution that "sort of works" in no way invalidates my statement. Perhaps my exact wording wasn't perfect, but if the solution doesn't work as well in OS X as it does in OS 9, people that deal with a lot of fonts all the time have one less reason to upgrade.
That's not even taking into account all the hardware driver issues I also mentioned.
Well, drivers for older but expensive equipment are a whole 'nother (off-topic) issue. I was just responding to the statement suggesting there was no decent way to manage fonts on OS X.
Again, I have to say that Suitcase 10.2 and Font Agent 1.3 are both perfectly good font management solutions. If you haven't used them for some time, definitely check them out -- they've improved considerably since their initial versions, and they work well. And both FontAgent and FontReserve go well beyond the much-loved ATM Deluxe in checking for and repairing corrupt fonts.
I do agree that until font managements apps on OS X offer features *superior* to their OS 9 versions, you can't honestly say font management on OS X is any better. And certainly having a true multi-user system and Classic complicate matters. (Less than people say, though.) And the UI for every one, bar none, of the F.M. apps on OS X can and should be much improved. That's why FontBook is so welcome -- I hope and expect it'll raise the bar for font management apps.
But anyway. Is this really a deciding factor for designers choosing to upgrade to OS X? Maybe, but it's just one factor out of many. You move to X for far superior system stability, much improved multitasking, the gorgeous graphics system. Font management... well, you want some kind of solution to be there, and for it be as transparent as possible. I'd say there we're there already, but it's on the edge of getting better than it was before, instead just about equal.
But anyway. Is this really a deciding factor for designers choosing to upgrade to OS X? Maybe, but it's just one factor out of many. You move to X for far superior system stability, much improved multitasking, the gorgeous graphics system. Font management... well, you want some kind of solution to be there, and for it be as transparent as possible. I'd say there we're there already, but it's on the edge of getting better than it was before, instead just about equal.
As far as the drivers issue.. it's off topic as far as Apple's Font Book manager goes, specifically, but it's part of a larger issue.. what's keeping the 25 million some odd "Classic" users from moving to OS X.
That figure if it's accurate is a little over 3x the current OS X figure of 7 million.
I hope your right about Font Management is getting better than OS 9. I used Font Reserve in OS 9, and while it's there for OS X, I've had some "issues" with it, and it has never worked as well as it did under OS 9, and certainly the interface doesn't seem as smooth as I think it should be for OS X.
I didn't really like Suitcase on OS 9, so I haven't tried it on OS X. I don't have 4000+ fonts, I have slightly less than 1000, and I've been able to muddle by, but I would dearly love Font Book and would upgrade for that and iChat AV alone.
So as far as the "topic" goes, I see this topic as both:
1. specifically the issue of Font Book in Panther, it's advantages and limitations.
and
2. the larger issue of font management in OS X and drivers, Quark, etc. that keep people from moving from OS 9 to OS X.
The first issue is mostly for people who are already using OS X and are thinking of upgrading, the second is more about the platform as a whole and how Font Book fits into Apple's strategy to lure OS 9 "stragglers."
If Apple can lure any substantial amount of those users, it can gain significant "marketshare" (ie. sales) without siphoning off very many PC users.
For the most part font management is already "there" in OSX. Suitcase, Font Reserve and Font Agent (and now I guess Master Juggler has been revived from the dead) all work with their own pecadillos and pluses. While everyone has fond memories, or are still happily using ATM Deluxe, I have had more problems with ATM Deluxe than I care to remember. The days of ATM Deluxe taking down my systems and then corrupting fonts and then not loading and then requiring a reinstall are over. ATM Deluxe was a messy system hack of the worst sort.
I still have a beef with every one of the font utilities in OSX, from Suitcase's speed and retard UI, to Font Reserve's even more retarded UI and tendency to crash, but they mostly work and they are no worse than ATM Deluxe.
OSX is more picky about corrupted fonts than OS9, and once I went back and reinstalled clean fonts from the original disks I have not had an issue. This is where most font issues lie. I've freelanced in many offices and most offices (even the big $$$ ones with full time tech staff) have fonts that are fscked up six ways to hell. I can count on one hand the number of times I've received a clean set of fonts for a freelance job I was doing.
Completely agree. Font management is there in OS X. (Needs to get better, but it's there.)
I've been using Suitcase for almost two years (since OS X 10.1) for over 1000 fonts for my system. Only serious problem I've had was importing my type at first, which crashed Suitcase. It turned out to be a corrupt font (ID'd by seeing where Suitcase stopped importing); once removed, I've had few problems since, and plug-ins auto-activate fonts nicely in InDesign and Illustrator.
Basically, I really don't think about it. I'm just doing my design. Occasionally Suitcase crashes, which is annoying, but it's not frequent. Suitcase 10.2 improved on 10.1's dreadful sluggishness. Don't get me started on the shortcomings of Suitcase's UI.
FontAgent is unquestionably a better program, but something about its UI irritates me. (Aqua tabs on metal.... brrr.) So I'm in a hold and wait state... to see whether Extensis folds some of FontReserve's better features into Suitcase, FontAgent lives up to its promise, MasterJuggler reveals itself, and whether FontBook turns out to be as good as it looks.
So, the future is looking a bit better, even if we have lost Font Reserve.
If Font Book truns out well, the likes of Extensis will need to offer more than they do today in order to justify the expense, as Font Book will come free with OSX.
A timely bump to an otherwise dead and gone thread...
I was reading through some forums at a graphics-oriented site and one guy who seemed to know his stuff and have his act together really heaped praise on FontAgent Pro from InsiderSoftware.
Sure enough, I went to check it out and they have a functioning 30-day trial. I'm VERY impressed. It's like ATM Deluxe, only a gazillion times better, more robust (BUT more simple, if you can imagine).
Organizes your stuff, weeds out bad stuff, is quick, stable, auto-activates fonts in Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop (my trio of work apps). And it's only $89, a few bucks less than Suitcase.
Read though this stuff...makes it sound really good, particularly the side-by-side comparing with Suitcase, FontReserve and even ATM Deluxe (of which there is no OS X version).
I think I've found my new font manager (if Panther's FontBook doesn't auto-activate, then it's really no good to me...such a hassle to go and manually activate the stuff).
Check it out (do what I did and download the 30-day demo...if I still feel as good about this solution in 29 days as I do today, I'll gladly give Insider my $89!):
Yeah, that's neat for disk-level organzing, I guess.
In my folders, I still have my standard way of doing this:
Dingbats/Picture Fonts
Display Typefaces
Handwritten/Script
Sans Serif
Serif
So it's the best of all worlds. I was using it this morning and late last night and I really, really dig it. Definitely gonna buy it because I'm convinced that Panther's solution (while cool and probably adequate for most) isn't going to be this robust, full-featured, have the repair/diagnostic capabilities, the auto-activation, the Play technology, etc.
I read somewhere that Font Book auto-activated InDesign requested fonts without any plug-ins whatsoever. I'm curious whether Panther will bring with it some sort of technology that lets system wide application auto-activate, like OS9.
If this is the case, maybe software such as Font Agent won't need the plug-ins like it currently does for auto-activation.
But Font Agent as is does seem to bring us nearer to the holy grail that was OS9/ATM. Maybe with Panther it will finally be realised.
I read somewhere that Font Book auto-activated InDesign requested fonts without any plug-ins whatsoever. I'm curious whether Panther will bring with it some sort of technology that lets system wide application auto-activate, like OS9.
Nothing about auto-activation, but there was a nice report by someone on Macintouch (thanks for the tip, C47!) giving the low-down on how well Font Book currently integrates with OS X applications.
In short -- Cocoa? Good. InDesign? Good. Quark? Bad. What a shock.
Actually I'll copy the whole report here, since it seems appropriate:
Quote:
From: Trevor Page
Subject: Panther and built-in font management report
I thought I would pass along my investigation into the built-in font management in Panther for your readers. Please use my name and email in the report as I might be able to answer any further questions for them.
Panther (Mac OS X 10.3) and Font Book investigation:
Since Apple has decided to include font management in Panther (Font Book application) I figured I would take some time to investigate how good it is, and what caveats publishers would encounter.
My observations are as follows:
Font Book would recognize my font library folder that has been very carefully organized alphabetically and by family name. I was able to dump each font folder into /Library/Fonts or ~/Library/Fonts and it would "see" the fonts in their respective folder. However when activated and deactivated, Font Book would move these fonts out of these folders and dump them loose into the main font folder. So much for organization...
Secondly, I experienced major slowdown and problems with my complete library dumped en masse using this method. After what seemed like an eternity of the spinning pizza wheel I was able to go back in and remove all my folders and copy certain fonts loose into the main font folder with better success. I think this method is what works best so far.
Application Notes:
Once I saw how Font Book works (it manually moves fonts in and out of the Fonts deactivated folders) I decided to see how it works with various applications. I tested Quark 4.1 & 5.1 in Classic, Quark 6 in Mac OS X and InDesign 2.0.2 in Mac OS X, TextEdit (Cocoa app), BBEdit 7.0(carbon app) and Microsoft Word X. Here is what I observed.
Quark 6
No matter what I did I had to quit Font Book AND quit and relaunch Quark 6 if I activated a font that I had previously deactivated. This is a HUGE problem. You can deactivate a font just fine and it will disappear from the font menu but an activated font will never show up unless you quit BOTH apps. Simply quitting one or the other will not suffice. Strike one.
Quark 5 in Classic
Font Book shows the fonts present in Classic, however any font not present in /System Folder/Fonts in Classic will not show up. This means that at this point Font Book is useless for managing fonts for Classic if they are outside the Classic system folder. I was able to activate and deactivate fonts for Classic however the change is not immediate and requires a reboot of Classic. Strike two.
P.S. It appears that Classic apps now get double-buffered windows. I did not experience any visual redraw artifacts like in Jaguar that are so annoying in Quark 4. I did notice though that resizing a document in Classic would not show the box outline being resized. This is probably a bug at this point since things are still in beta.
Quark 4 in Classic.
Same thing as Quark 5. No surprise here.
InDesign 2.0.2
Font Book and InDesign work flawlessly together. Activating and deactivating fonts in either Mac OS X or Classic affect InDesign as expected. Re activating a font previously used in a document in InDesign simply worked with the font reappearing immediately after bringing InDesign to the front.
TextEdit
Again, things worked as expected here. Exactly the same behaviour as InDesign.
BBEdit 7.0
Works, mostly. Activating or deactivating fonts regardless of the OS would cause the selected text to lose its font attribute. However the font name remained listed in the font menu. I suspect BBEdit is caching the font names upon launching at not updating the font menu until relaunched.
Microsoft Word X
Same behaviour as BBEdit.
Conclusions:
It is apparent that Cocoa applications play by the Mac OS X rules of dynamic font management. However there is a varying amount of compliance among Carbon apps. The best behaved is Adobe InDesign 2.0, the worst is Quark (any version). Keep in mind Panther is still in Beta testing and some issues may still be resolved by the time it ships but my final feeling is that if you use Quark you will not be able to manage your fonts without a third-party font management program. InDesign users have nothing to fret about as it works as expected (thank-you Adobe). With the advent of built-in font management in Panther I think developers will need to have a closer look into making their applications more-font aware and compliant with the Mac OS X font services.
perhaps the reason adobe canceled ATm was they knew of an up-and-coming Apple supplied utility, namely FontBook.
It's my guess that numerous features are in constant development and big name developers like Adobe, MicroSoft,...etc have access to some parts of the software roadmap in order to help with development of their applications. For example. if FontBook works so well with InDesign at this early stage, it seems that Adobe would have some prior knowledge of such things.
However, with Apple building these types of capabilities into the supplied software, perhaps it is now up to the developers to discover ways of accessing those capabilities (like they can access AddressBook and iTunes' databases).
Interesting report, above. Hmmm. I realize it's still beta, but I'm beginning to believe that FontBook isn't going to be the built-in, system level "end all/be all" font management solution I'd hoped.
Of course, no big deal. I'm not bummed. Not since last night and discovering FontAgent Pro.
Exactly. The first thing I thought of when I heard Adobe wasn't porting ATM Deluxe was that Apple was including Font services in OS X.
Granted, it took longer than I thought, but those who whine about Adobe not porting ATM need to realize that it was in Apple's interest to let Adobe know early, so that valuable resources weren't deflected from Photoshop, InDesign etc.
Now if they'd only upgrade GoLive, all would be well in the universe...
perhaps the reason adobe canceled ATm was they knew of an up-and-coming Apple supplied utility, namely FontBook.
Nope. Adobe was very clear when they announced the demise of ATM, that they had no interest in hacking the living daylights out another operating system. Remember that ATM began life as just a font rasterizer, which is now unneccesary in OS X. The rest off the functionality was added much later (killing off a few competitors) and was eventually rolled into all Adobe type oriented products.
Font Book, like Safari and iPhoto is Apple's attempt to fill in a gaping hole where most third-party software sucks to high heaven.
Or Adobe realised just how difficult it would be to build ATM in OSX, and keeping up with the pace of development.
As for Adobe having some kind of inside knowledge enabling them to build in InDesign compatibility I think its more like InDesign is just a better behaved application.
I too will be surprised if Font Book turns out how we wish it would.
Comments
I was able to read it before he sent it and Font Book is a mixed blessing. He's tested it with various apps (Quark 4,5 and 6, InDesign, Word X, and few others) with various good and bad results. Suffice it to say that InDesign was the best behaved of all the applications...
They don't have a demo out, though, so I wasn't able to test it.
-Heady
Originally posted by Steven R Wilson
But without some way to manage 4,000+ fonts or more that many people have in their shops, all those other features are "eye candy" and likely many will stick to OS 9.
FontBook looks completely welcome, but I have to wonder at statements like these.
What about Suitcase? FontAgent? MasterJuggler?
(A week ago, I would have added FontReserve, but Extensis just bought 'em out, so we'll see where that goes.)
You can point flaws in each of these solutions -- and each has its frustrations -- but I've tested all of the above (except for MasterJuggler), and they all work.
Apple polish is all well and good, but implying there's no way to manage fonts in OS X just isn't true.
Originally posted by Hobbes
FontBook looks completely welcome, but I have to wonder at statements like these.
What about Suitcase? FontAgent? MasterJuggler?
(A week ago, I would have added FontReserve, but Extensis just bought 'em out, so we'll see where that goes.)
You can point flaws in each of these solutions -- and each has its frustrations -- but I've tested all of the above (except for MasterJuggler), and they all work.
Apple polish is all well and good, but implying there's just no way to manage fonts in OS X just isn't true
Indeed they "work" to some extent, but if all you are talking about is just that you can indeed get the job done with them without regard to the efficiency or elegance of the solution, than why are we all on a Mac forum discussing this?
Hell, Windows can do most of what a Mac can do if you don't care about the elegance or efficiency or user friendliness.. You can also get a Windows box for less than a Mac box in most cases, with more expandability and upgradability.
The mere existence of a solution that "sort of works" in no way invalidates my statement. Perhaps my exact wording wasn't perfect, but if the solution doesn't work as well in OS X as it does in OS 9, people that deal with a lot of fonts all the time have one less reason to upgrade.
That's not even taking into account all the hardware driver issues I also mentioned.
Originally posted by Steven R Wilson
Indeed they "work" to some extent, but if all you are talking about is just that you can indeed get the job done with them without regard to the efficiency or elegance of the solution, than why are we all on a Mac forum discussing this?
Hell, Windows can do most of what a Mac can do if you don't care about the elegance or efficiency or user friendliness.. You can also get a Windows box for less than a Mac box in most cases, with more expandability and upgradability.
The mere existence of a solution that "sort of works" in no way invalidates my statement. Perhaps my exact wording wasn't perfect, but if the solution doesn't work as well in OS X as it does in OS 9, people that deal with a lot of fonts all the time have one less reason to upgrade.
That's not even taking into account all the hardware driver issues I also mentioned.
Well, drivers for older but expensive equipment are a whole 'nother (off-topic) issue. I was just responding to the statement suggesting there was no decent way to manage fonts on OS X.
Again, I have to say that Suitcase 10.2 and Font Agent 1.3 are both perfectly good font management solutions. If you haven't used them for some time, definitely check them out -- they've improved considerably since their initial versions, and they work well. And both FontAgent and FontReserve go well beyond the much-loved ATM Deluxe in checking for and repairing corrupt fonts.
I do agree that until font managements apps on OS X offer features *superior* to their OS 9 versions, you can't honestly say font management on OS X is any better. And certainly having a true multi-user system and Classic complicate matters. (Less than people say, though.) And the UI for every one, bar none, of the F.M. apps on OS X can and should be much improved. That's why FontBook is so welcome -- I hope and expect it'll raise the bar for font management apps.
But anyway. Is this really a deciding factor for designers choosing to upgrade to OS X? Maybe, but it's just one factor out of many. You move to X for far superior system stability, much improved multitasking, the gorgeous graphics system. Font management... well, you want some kind of solution to be there, and for it be as transparent as possible. I'd say there we're there already, but it's on the edge of getting better than it was before, instead just about equal.
But anyway. Is this really a deciding factor for designers choosing to upgrade to OS X? Maybe, but it's just one factor out of many. You move to X for far superior system stability, much improved multitasking, the gorgeous graphics system. Font management... well, you want some kind of solution to be there, and for it be as transparent as possible. I'd say there we're there already, but it's on the edge of getting better than it was before, instead just about equal.
As far as the drivers issue.. it's off topic as far as Apple's Font Book manager goes, specifically, but it's part of a larger issue.. what's keeping the 25 million some odd "Classic" users from moving to OS X.
That figure if it's accurate is a little over 3x the current OS X figure of 7 million.
I hope your right about Font Management is getting better than OS 9. I used Font Reserve in OS 9, and while it's there for OS X, I've had some "issues" with it, and it has never worked as well as it did under OS 9, and certainly the interface doesn't seem as smooth as I think it should be for OS X.
I didn't really like Suitcase on OS 9, so I haven't tried it on OS X. I don't have 4000+ fonts, I have slightly less than 1000, and I've been able to muddle by, but I would dearly love Font Book and would upgrade for that and iChat AV alone.
So as far as the "topic" goes, I see this topic as both:
1. specifically the issue of Font Book in Panther, it's advantages and limitations.
and
2. the larger issue of font management in OS X and drivers, Quark, etc. that keep people from moving from OS 9 to OS X.
The first issue is mostly for people who are already using OS X and are thinking of upgrading, the second is more about the platform as a whole and how Font Book fits into Apple's strategy to lure OS 9 "stragglers."
If Apple can lure any substantial amount of those users, it can gain significant "marketshare" (ie. sales) without siphoning off very many PC users.
I still have a beef with every one of the font utilities in OSX, from Suitcase's speed and retard UI, to Font Reserve's even more retarded UI and tendency to crash, but they mostly work and they are no worse than ATM Deluxe.
OSX is more picky about corrupted fonts than OS9, and once I went back and reinstalled clean fonts from the original disks I have not had an issue. This is where most font issues lie. I've freelanced in many offices and most offices (even the big $$$ ones with full time tech staff) have fonts that are fscked up six ways to hell. I can count on one hand the number of times I've received a clean set of fonts for a freelance job I was doing.
Completely agree. Font management is there in OS X. (Needs to get better, but it's there.)
I've been using Suitcase for almost two years (since OS X 10.1) for over 1000 fonts for my system. Only serious problem I've had was importing my type at first, which crashed Suitcase. It turned out to be a corrupt font (ID'd by seeing where Suitcase stopped importing); once removed, I've had few problems since, and plug-ins auto-activate fonts nicely in InDesign and Illustrator.
Basically, I really don't think about it. I'm just doing my design. Occasionally Suitcase crashes, which is annoying, but it's not frequent. Suitcase 10.2 improved on 10.1's dreadful sluggishness. Don't get me started on the shortcomings of Suitcase's UI.
FontAgent is unquestionably a better program, but something about its UI irritates me. (Aqua tabs on metal.... brrr.) So I'm in a hold and wait state... to see whether Extensis folds some of FontReserve's better features into Suitcase, FontAgent lives up to its promise, MasterJuggler reveals itself, and whether FontBook turns out to be as good as it looks.
If Font Book truns out well, the likes of Extensis will need to offer more than they do today in order to justify the expense, as Font Book will come free with OSX.
I was reading through some forums at a graphics-oriented site and one guy who seemed to know his stuff and have his act together really heaped praise on FontAgent Pro from InsiderSoftware.
Sure enough, I went to check it out and they have a functioning 30-day trial. I'm VERY impressed. It's like ATM Deluxe, only a gazillion times better, more robust (BUT more simple, if you can imagine).
Organizes your stuff, weeds out bad stuff, is quick, stable, auto-activates fonts in Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop (my trio of work apps). And it's only $89, a few bucks less than Suitcase.
Read though this stuff...makes it sound really good, particularly the side-by-side comparing with Suitcase, FontReserve and even ATM Deluxe (of which there is no OS X version).
I think I've found my new font manager (if Panther's FontBook doesn't auto-activate, then it's really no good to me...such a hassle to go and manually activate the stuff).
Check it out (do what I did and download the 30-day demo...if I still feel as good about this solution in 29 days as I do today, I'll gladly give Insider my $89!):
http://www.insidersoftware.com/produ...pro/index.html
I'm running the trial right now, indeed it is impressive so far.
Haven't installed the plug-ins yet, pity will still need to rely on them.
Noticed how its copied all of the fonts you gave it over to a new folder and put them in alphabetically titled sub-folders?
In my folders, I still have my standard way of doing this:
Dingbats/Picture Fonts
Display Typefaces
Handwritten/Script
Sans Serif
Serif
So it's the best of all worlds. I was using it this morning and late last night and I really, really dig it. Definitely gonna buy it because I'm convinced that Panther's solution (while cool and probably adequate for most) isn't going to be this robust, full-featured, have the repair/diagnostic capabilities, the auto-activation, the Play technology, etc.
If this is the case, maybe software such as Font Agent won't need the plug-ins like it currently does for auto-activation.
But Font Agent as is does seem to bring us nearer to the holy grail that was OS9/ATM. Maybe with Panther it will finally be realised.
Originally posted by naderby
I read somewhere that Font Book auto-activated InDesign requested fonts without any plug-ins whatsoever. I'm curious whether Panther will bring with it some sort of technology that lets system wide application auto-activate, like OS9.
Nothing about auto-activation, but there was a nice report by someone on Macintouch (thanks for the tip, C47!) giving the low-down on how well Font Book currently integrates with OS X applications.
In short -- Cocoa? Good. InDesign? Good. Quark? Bad. What a shock.
Actually I'll copy the whole report here, since it seems appropriate:
From: Trevor Page
Subject: Panther and built-in font management report
I thought I would pass along my investigation into the built-in font management in Panther for your readers. Please use my name and email in the report as I might be able to answer any further questions for them.
Panther (Mac OS X 10.3) and Font Book investigation:
Since Apple has decided to include font management in Panther (Font Book application) I figured I would take some time to investigate how good it is, and what caveats publishers would encounter.
My observations are as follows:
Font Book would recognize my font library folder that has been very carefully organized alphabetically and by family name. I was able to dump each font folder into /Library/Fonts or ~/Library/Fonts and it would "see" the fonts in their respective folder. However when activated and deactivated, Font Book would move these fonts out of these folders and dump them loose into the main font folder. So much for organization...
Secondly, I experienced major slowdown and problems with my complete library dumped en masse using this method. After what seemed like an eternity of the spinning pizza wheel I was able to go back in and remove all my folders and copy certain fonts loose into the main font folder with better success. I think this method is what works best so far.
Application Notes:
Once I saw how Font Book works (it manually moves fonts in and out of the Fonts deactivated folders) I decided to see how it works with various applications. I tested Quark 4.1 & 5.1 in Classic, Quark 6 in Mac OS X and InDesign 2.0.2 in Mac OS X, TextEdit (Cocoa app), BBEdit 7.0(carbon app) and Microsoft Word X. Here is what I observed.
Quark 6
No matter what I did I had to quit Font Book AND quit and relaunch Quark 6 if I activated a font that I had previously deactivated. This is a HUGE problem. You can deactivate a font just fine and it will disappear from the font menu but an activated font will never show up unless you quit BOTH apps. Simply quitting one or the other will not suffice. Strike one.
Quark 5 in Classic
Font Book shows the fonts present in Classic, however any font not present in /System Folder/Fonts in Classic will not show up. This means that at this point Font Book is useless for managing fonts for Classic if they are outside the Classic system folder. I was able to activate and deactivate fonts for Classic however the change is not immediate and requires a reboot of Classic. Strike two.
P.S. It appears that Classic apps now get double-buffered windows. I did not experience any visual redraw artifacts like in Jaguar that are so annoying in Quark 4. I did notice though that resizing a document in Classic would not show the box outline being resized. This is probably a bug at this point since things are still in beta.
Quark 4 in Classic.
Same thing as Quark 5. No surprise here.
InDesign 2.0.2
Font Book and InDesign work flawlessly together. Activating and deactivating fonts in either Mac OS X or Classic affect InDesign as expected. Re activating a font previously used in a document in InDesign simply worked with the font reappearing immediately after bringing InDesign to the front.
TextEdit
Again, things worked as expected here. Exactly the same behaviour as InDesign.
BBEdit 7.0
Works, mostly. Activating or deactivating fonts regardless of the OS would cause the selected text to lose its font attribute. However the font name remained listed in the font menu. I suspect BBEdit is caching the font names upon launching at not updating the font menu until relaunched.
Microsoft Word X
Same behaviour as BBEdit.
Conclusions:
It is apparent that Cocoa applications play by the Mac OS X rules of dynamic font management. However there is a varying amount of compliance among Carbon apps. The best behaved is Adobe InDesign 2.0, the worst is Quark (any version). Keep in mind Panther is still in Beta testing and some issues may still be resolved by the time it ships but my final feeling is that if you use Quark you will not be able to manage your fonts without a third-party font management program. InDesign users have nothing to fret about as it works as expected (thank-you Adobe). With the advent of built-in font management in Panther I think developers will need to have a closer look into making their applications more-font aware and compliant with the Mac OS X font services.
Originally posted by Hobbes
Once I saw how Font Book works (it manually moves fonts in and out of the Fonts deactivated folders) I decided to see...
Something about that line makes me shudder.
Are we saying that when I activate a font set which contains say 100 fonts they are actually moved by Font Book to an active font folder?
Surely there is a better way than this. Wonder how Font Agent manages?
It's my guess that numerous features are in constant development and big name developers like Adobe, MicroSoft,...etc have access to some parts of the software roadmap in order to help with development of their applications. For example. if FontBook works so well with InDesign at this early stage, it seems that Adobe would have some prior knowledge of such things.
However, with Apple building these types of capabilities into the supplied software, perhaps it is now up to the developers to discover ways of accessing those capabilities (like they can access AddressBook and iTunes' databases).
Of course, no big deal. I'm not bummed. Not since last night and discovering FontAgent Pro.
Granted, it took longer than I thought, but those who whine about Adobe not porting ATM need to realize that it was in Apple's interest to let Adobe know early, so that valuable resources weren't deflected from Photoshop, InDesign etc.
Now if they'd only upgrade GoLive, all would be well in the universe...
perhaps the reason adobe canceled ATm was they knew of an up-and-coming Apple supplied utility, namely FontBook.
Nope. Adobe was very clear when they announced the demise of ATM, that they had no interest in hacking the living daylights out another operating system. Remember that ATM began life as just a font rasterizer, which is now unneccesary in OS X. The rest off the functionality was added much later (killing off a few competitors) and was eventually rolled into all Adobe type oriented products.
Font Book, like Safari and iPhoto is Apple's attempt to fill in a gaping hole where most third-party software sucks to high heaven.
As for Adobe having some kind of inside knowledge enabling them to build in InDesign compatibility I think its more like InDesign is just a better behaved application.
I too will be surprised if Font Book turns out how we wish it would.