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Works great in a design/production setting
Authored by: bradyj on Sep 22, '05 12:39:14PM

We've been discussing and testing this already:
http://www.jasonsantamaria.com/archive/2005/09/13/fontexplorer_x.php

I don't see how everyone is complaining -- I've been using this for over a week now, as well as all my designers. We've been using it from high print to web production (no quark, only CS2) -- it's been great so far, I've had only one issue which required me to do a fresh copying of fonts on one computer and that's it.

All in all, even in beta, this is light years ahead of Suitcase.

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Brady J. Frey
www.dotfive.com



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Works great in a design/production setting
Authored by: DavidRavenMoon on Sep 22, '05 01:10:20PM

"All in all, even in beta, this is light years ahead of Suitcase."

I wish this were true, but alas, it is not. As much as I am starting to dislike Suitcase, especially in Tiger, the big problem with Linotype FontExplorer X is that is wants to either copy or move the fonts you are trying to manage. This is an issue unless you are only using your own local font library.

We are a commercial printer, and mostly receive files from the outside. It's always imperative that you use only the customer's fonts that were included with the job, unless they are missing/corrupt. Even for common fonts like Helvetica, you should use the fonts supplied with the job, or you risk rewrapping of text, etc.

The way we work, and no doubt many other shops, is to copy the customer's files to a file server. We then work entirely off the server, and at no time do we copy any of the files or fonts to our local hard drive. One reason for this is we use the Rampage RIP workflow, which only works with files on the server.

So as you can see we cannot use any font manager that copies/moves fonts.

I downloaded this hoping it would be an alternative to Suitcase, but it's about as useful in this situation as Apple's Font Book, which is to say, not at all. With all of its bugs, Suitcase can open remote fonts without copying/moving the font files. :(

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G5/2.7GHz x 2, 1.5 GB, Mac OS X 10.4.2
www.david-schwab.com
www.imanicoppolamusic.com



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Works great in a design/production setting
Authored by: krisbrowne42 on Sep 22, '05 01:18:30PM

Not true... You can go into the preferences and uncheck "Manage Font Files" under the Advanced tab, and it will load the fonts without copying or moving them. We are a commercial shop as well and this has worked well so far.

We're currently using FontAgent Pro WGE for our production machines, but when the final of this comes out, I might ditch it altogether, as the interface of FontExplorer seems more stable than FAP...


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The package said \"Windows 95 or better. Pentium or better\"... So I got a Mac with OS X.



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Works great in a design/production setting
Authored by: DavidRavenMoon on Sep 22, '05 01:23:28PM

If that's the case, then I will give it a try. When I first launched it it gave the choices to not manage fonts, move fonts, and copy fonts.

Not very intuitive! I *do* want to manage the fonts, but I don't want to move/copy them!

As long as it can activate the fonts without copying them, it looks like a great product!

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G5/2.7GHz x 2, 1.5 GB, Mac OS X 10.4.2
www.david-schwab.com
www.imanicoppolamusic.com



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